"Have you questioned Olimpia? Hasn't she helped her--hasn't she
done it for her?" I asked; to which Miss Tita replied promptly and
positively that their servant had had nothing to do with the matter,
though without admitting definitely that she had spoken to her.
It was as if she were a little shy, a little ashamed now of letting me
see how much she had entered into my uneasiness and had me on her mind.
Suddenly she said to me, without any immediate relevance:
"I feel as if you were a new person, now that you have got a new name."
"It isn't a new one; it is a very good old one, thank heaven!"
She looked at me a moment. "I do like it better."
"Oh, if you didn't I would almost go on with the other!"
"Would you really?"
I laughed again, but for all answer to this inquiry I said,
"Of course if she can rummage about that way she can perfectly
have burnt them."
"You must wait--you must wait," Miss Tita moralized mournfully;
and her tone ministered little to my patience, for it
seemed after all to accept that wretched possibility.
I would teach myself to wait, I declared nevertheless;
because in the first place I could not do otherwise and in
the second I had her promise, given me the other night,
that she would help me.
"Of course if the papers are gone that's no use," she said;
not as if she wished to recede, but only to be conscientious.
"Naturally. But if you could only find out!" I groaned, quivering again.
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