She had dreamt over again the priest's earnest warning that her life was in danger, and she had imagined that she heard a footstep of a person coming up quickly behind her.

Then, somehow, in the same instant, recalling what Don Teodoro had told her about her uncle's frauds, she had seemed to know that he had refused the money in the afternoon because there was no more to take, nor to be given to her.
Waking suddenly, she had heard Elettra's anxious voice, giving the strong impression that she was really in present peril.

Then she had really thought that she heard another footstep, somewhere, while Elettra was standing still beside her.

It had only been the cat, of course.

It was such a very fat cat, as Elettra said, and the floors were of the old-fashioned sort, laid on wooden beams, and trembled very easily, as they do in old Italian houses.