CHAPTER XIV

The party returning to Marinata had two hours to spend in the gallery and

garden of the Villa Borghese. Of the pictures and statues of the palace, of

the green undulations, the stone pines, the _tempietti_ of the garden, Lucy

afterwards had no recollection. All that she remembered was flight on her

part, pursuit on Manisty's, and finally a man triumphant and a girl brought

to bay.

It was in a shady corner of the vast garden, where hedges of some fragrant

yellow shrub shut in the basin of a fountain, surrounded by a ring of

languid nymphs, that Lucy at last found herself face to face with Manisty,

and knew that she must submit.

'I do not understand how I have missed Mrs. Burgoyne,' she said hastily,

looking round for her companion Mrs. Elliot, who had just left her to

overtake her brother and go home; while Lucy was to meet Eleanor and Mr.

Neal at this rendezvous.

Manisty looked at her with his most sparkling, most determined air.

'You have missed her--because I have misled her.' Then, as Lucy drew back,

he hurried on,--'I cannot understand, Miss Foster, why it is that you

have constantly refused all yesterday evening--all to-day--to give me the

opportunity I desired! But I, too, have a will,--and it has been roused!

'I don't understand,' said Lucy, growing white.

'Let me explain, then,' said Manisty, coolly. 'Miss Foster, two nights ago

you were attacked,--in danger--under my roof, in my care. As your host, you

owe it to me, to let me account and apologise for such things--if I can.

But you avoid me. You give me no chance of telling you what I had done

to protect you--of expressing my infinite sorrow and regret. I can only

imagine that you resent our negligence too deeply even to speak of it--that

you cannot forgive us!'

'Forgive!' cried Lucy, fairly taken aback. 'What could I have to forgive,

Mr. Manisty?--what can you mean?'

'Explain to me then,' said he, unflinching, 'why you have never had a kind

word for me, or a kind look, since this happened. Please sit down, Miss

Foster'--he pointed to a marble bench close beside her--'I will stand here.

The others are far away. Ten minutes you owe me--ten minutes I claim.'

Lucy sat down, struggling to maintain her dignity and presence of mind.

'I am afraid I have given you very wrong ideas of me,' she said, throwing

him a timid smile. 'I of course have nothing to forgive anybody--far, far

the contrary. I know that you took all possible pains that no harm should

happen to me. And through you--no harm did happen to me.'

She turned away her head, speaking with difficulty. To both that moment

of frenzied struggle at the dining-room door was almost too horrible for

remembrance. And through both minds there swept once more the thrill of her

call to him--of his rush to her aid.

'You knew'--he said eagerly, coming closer.

'I knew--I was in danger--that but for you--perhaps--your poor sister--'

'Oh! don't speak of it,' he said, shuddering.

And leaning over the edge of one of the nymphs' pedestals, beside her, he

stared silently into the cool green water.

'There,' said Lucy tremulously, 'you don't want to speak of it. And that

was my feeling. Why should we speak of it any more? It must be such a

horrible grief to you. And I can't do anything to help you and Miss

Manisty. It would be so different if I could.'

'You can,--you must--let me tell you what I had done for your safety that

night,' he said firmly, interrupting her. 'I had made such arrangements

with Dalgetty--who is a strong woman physically--I had so imprisoned my

poor sister, that I could not imagine any harm coming to you or any other

of our party. When my aunt said to me that night before she went to bed

that she was afraid your door was unsafe, I laughed--"That doesn't matter!"

I said to her. I felt quite confident. I sat up all night,--but I was not

anxious,--and I suppose it was that which at last betrayed me into sleep.

Of course, the fatal thing was that we none of us knew of the chloroform

she had hidden away.'

Lucy fidgetted in distress.

'Please--please--don't talk as though anyone were to blame--as though there

were anything to make excuses for--'.

'How should there not be? You were disturbed--attacked--frightened. You

might--'

He drew in his breath. Then he bent over her.

'Tell me,' he said in a low voice, 'did she attack you in your room?'

Lucy hesitated. 'Why will you talk about it?' she said despairingly.

'I have a right to know.'

His urgent imperious look left her no choice. She felt his will, and

yielded. In very simple words, faltering yet restrained, she told the whole

story. Manisty followed every word with breathless attention.

'My God!' he said, when she paused, 'my God!' And he hid his eyes with his

hand a moment. Then--

'You knew she had a weapon?' he said.

'I supposed so,' she said quietly. 'All the time she was in my room, she

kept her poor hand closed on something.'

'Her poor hand!'--the little phrase seemed to Manisty extraordinarily

touching. There was a moment's pause--then he broke out:

'Upon my word, this has been a fine ending to the whole business. Miss

Foster, when you came out to stay with us, you imagined, I suppose, that

you were coming to stay with friends? You didn't know much of us; but after

the kindness my aunt and I had experienced from your friends and kinsfolk

in Boston--to put it in the crudest way--you might have expected at least

that we should welcome you warmly--do all we could for you--take you

everywhere--show you everything?'

Lucy coloured--then laughed.

'I don't know in the least what you mean, Mr. Manisty! I knew you would be

kind to me; and of course--of course--you have been!'

She looked in distress first at the little path leading from the fountain,

by which he barred her exit, and then at him. She seemed to implore, either

that he would let her go, or that he would talk of something else.

'Not I,' he said with decision. 'I admit that since Alice appeared on the

scene you have been my chief anxiety. But before that, I treated you, Miss

Foster, with a discourtesy, a forgetfulness, that you can't, that you

oughtn't to forget; I made no plans for your amusement; I gave you none of

my time. On your first visit to Rome, I let you mope away day after day

in that stifling garden, without taking a single thought for you. I even

grudged it when Mrs. Burgoyne looked after you. To be quite, quite frank,

I grudged your coming to us at all. Yet I was your host--you were in my

care--I had invited you. If there ever was an ungentlemanly boor, it was I.

There! Miss Foster, there is my confession. Can you forgive it? Will you

give me another chance?'

He stood over her, his broad chest heaving with an agitation that, do what

she would, communicated itself to her. She could not help it. She put out

her hand, with a sweet look, half smiling, half appealing--and he took it.

Then, as she hurriedly withdrew it, she repeated:

'There is nothing--nothing--to forgive. You have _all_ been good to me. And

as for Mrs. Burgoyne and Aunt Pattie, they have been just angels!'

Manisty laughed.

'I don't grudge them their wings. But I should like to grow a pair of my

own. You have a fortnight more with us--isn't it so?' Lucy started and

looked down. 'Well, in a fortnight, Miss Foster, I could yet redeem myself;

I could make your visit really worth while. It is hot, but we could get

round the heat. I have many opportunities here--friends who have the keys

of things not generally seen. Trust yourself to me. Take me for a guide, a

professor, a courier! At last I will give you a good time!'

He smiled upon her eagerly, impetuously. It was like him, this plan

for mending all past errors in a moment, for a summary and energetic

repentance. She could hardly help laughing; yet far within her heart made a

leap towards him--beaten back at once by its own sad knowledge.

She turned away from him--away from his handsome face, and that touch in

him of the 'imperishable child,' which moved and pleased her so. Playing

with some flowers on her lap, she said shyly--

'Shall I tell you what you ought to do with this fortnight?'

'Tell me,' said Manisty, stooping towards her. It was well for her that

she could not see his expression, as he took in with covetous delight her

maidenly simpleness and sweetness.

'Oughtn't you--to finish the book? You could--couldn't you? And Mrs.

Burgoyne has been so disappointed. It makes one sad to see her.'

Her words gave her courage. She looked at him again with a grave, friendly

air.

Manisty drew himself suddenly erect. After a pause, he said in another

voice: 'I thought I had explained to you before that the book and I had

reached a _cul de sac_--that I no longer saw my way with it.'

Lucy thought of the criticisms upon it she had heard at the Embassy, and

was uncomfortably silent.

'Miss Foster!' said Manisty suddenly, with determination.

Lucy's heart stood still.

'I believe I see the thought in your mind. Dismiss it! There have been

rumours in Rome--in which even perhaps my aunt has believed. They are

unjust--both to Eleanor and to me. She would be the first to tell you so.'

'Of course,' said Lucy hurriedly, 'of course,'--and then did not know what

to say, torn as she was between her Puritan dread of falsehood, her natural

woman's terror of betraying Eleanor, and her burning consciousness of the

man and the personality beside her.

'No!--you still doubt. You have heard some gossip and you believe it.'

He threw away the cigarette with which he had been playing, and came to sit

down on the curving marble bench beside her.

'I think you must listen to me,' he said, with a quiet and manly force that

became him. 'The friendship between my cousin and me has been unusual,

I know. It has been of a kind that French people, rather than English,

understand; because for French people literature and conversation are

serious matters, not trifles that don't count, as they are with us. She has

been all sweetness and kindness to me, and I suppose that she, like a good

many other people, has found me an unsatisfactory and disappointing person

to work with!'

'She is so ill and tired,' said Lucy, in a low voice.

'Is she?' said Manisty, concerned. 'But she never can stand heat. She

will pick up when she gets to England.--But now suppose we grant all my

enormities. Then please tell me what I am to do? How am I to appease

Eleanor?--and either transform the book, to satisfy Neal,--or else bury it

decently? Beastly thing!--as if it were worth one tithe of the trouble it

has cost her and me. Yet there are some uncommon good things in it too!' he

said, with a change of tone.

'Well, if you did bury it,' said Lucy, half laughing, yet trying to

pluck up courage to obey the Ambassador,--'what would you do? Go back to

England?--and--and to your property?'

'What! has that dear old man been talking to you?' he said with amusement.

'I thought as much. He has snubbed my views and me two or three times

lately. I don't mind. He is one of the privileged. So the Ambassador thinks

I should go home?'

He threw one arm over the back of the seat, and threw her a brilliant

hectoring look which led her on.

'Don't people in England think so too?'

'Yes--some of them,' he said considering. 'I have been bombarded with

letters lately as to politics, and the situation, and a possible new

constituency. A candid friend says to me this morning, "Hang the

Italians!--what do you know about them,--and what do they matter? English

people can only be frightened by their own bogies. Come home, for God's

sake! There's a glorious fight coming, and if you're not in it, you'll be a

precious fool."'

'I daren't be as candid as that!' said Lucy, her face quivering with

suppressed fun.

Their eyes met in a common flash of laughter. Then Manisty fell heavily

back against the seat.

'What have I got to go home for?' he said abruptly, his countenance

darkening.

Lucy's aspect changed too, instantly. She waited.

Manisty's lower jaw dropped a little. A sombre bitterness veiled the eyes

fixed upon the distant vistas of the garden.

'I hate my old house,' he said slowly. 'Its memories are intolerable.

My father was a very eminent person, and had many friends. His children

saw nothing of him, and had not much reason to love him. My mother died

there--of an illness it is appalling to think of. No, no--not Alice's

illness!--not that. And now, Alice,--I should see her ghost at every

corner!'

Lucy watched him with fascination. Every note of the singular voice, every

movement of the picturesque ungainly form, already spoke to her, poor

child, with a significance that bit these passing moments into memory, as

an etcher's acid bites upon his plate.

'Oh! she will recover!' she said, softly, leaning towards him

unconsciously.

'No!--she will never recover,--never! And if she did, she and I have long

ceased to be companions and friends. No, Miss Foster, there is nothing

to call me home,--except politics. I may set up a lodging in London, of

course. But as for playing the country squire--' He laughed, and shrugged

his shoulders. 'No,--I shall let the place as soon as I can. Anyway, I

shall never return to it--alone!'

He turned upon her suddenly. The tone in which the last word was spoken,

the steady ardent look with which it was accompanied, thrilled the hot May

air.

A sickening sense of peril, of swift intolerable remorse, rushed upon Lucy.

It gave her strength.

She changed her position, and spoke with perfect self-possession, gathering

up her parasol and gloves.

'We really must find the others, Mr. Manisty. They will wonder what has

become of us.'

She rose as she spoke. Manisty drew a long breath as he still sat

observing her. Her light, cool dignity showed him that he was either not

understood--or too well understood. In either case he was checked. He

took back his move; not without a secret pleasure that she was not too

yielding--too much of the _ingénue_!

'We shall soon discover them,' he said carelessly, relighting his

cigarette. 'By the way, I saw what company you were in after lunch! You

didn't hear any good of the book or me--there!'

'I liked them all,' she said with spirit. 'They love their country, and

they believe in her. Where, Mr. Manisty, did you leave Mr. Neal and Mrs.

Burgoyne?'

'I will show you,' he said, unwillingly. 'They are in a part of the garden

you don't know.'

Her eye was bright, a little hostile. She moved resolutely forward, and

Manisty followed her. Both were conscious of a hidden amazement. But a

minute, since he had spoken that word, looked that look? How strange a

thing is human life! He would not let himself think,--talked of he hardly

knew what.

'They love their country, you say? Well, I grant you that particular group

has pure hands, and isn't plundering their country's vitals like the

rest--as far as I know. A set of amiable dreamers, however, they appear to

me; fiddling at small reforms, while the foundations are sinking from under

them. However, you liked them,--that's enough. Now then, when and how shall

we begin our campaign? Where will you go?--what will you see? The crypt of

St. Peter's?--that wants a Cardinal's order. The Villa Albani?--closed to

the public since the Government laid hands on the Borghese pictures,--but

it shall open to you. The great function at the Austrian Embassy next week

with all the Cardinals? Give me your orders,--it will be hard if I can't

compass them!'

But she was silent, and he saw that she still hurried, that her look

sought the distance, that her cheek was flushed. Why? What new thing had

he said to press--to disturb her? A spark of emotion passed through him.

He approached her gently, persuasively, as one might approach a sweet,

resisting child--

You'll come? You'll let me make amends?'

'I thought,' said Lucy, uncertainly, 'that you were going home directly--at

the beginning of June. Oh! please, Mr. Manisty, will you look? Is that Mrs.

Burgoyne?'

Manisty frowned.

'They are not in that direction.--As to my going home, Miss Foster, I have

no engagements that I cannot break.'

The wounded feeling in the voice was unmistakable. It hurt her ear.

'I should love to see all those things,' she said vaguely, still trying, as

it seemed to him, to outstrip him, to search the figures in the distance;

'but--but--plans are so difficult. Oh! that is--that is Mr. Neal!'

She began to run towards the approaching figure, and presently Manisty

could hear her asking breathlessly for Mrs. Burgoyne.

Manisty stood still. Then as they approached him, he said--

'Neal!--well met! Will you take these ladies to the station, or, at any

rate, put them in their cab? It is time for their train. I dine in Rome.'

He raised his hat formally to Lucy, turned, and went his way.

* * * * *

It was night at the villa.

Eleanor was in her room, the western room overlooking the olive-ground

and the Campagna, which Lucy had occupied for a short time on her first

arrival.

It was about half an hour since Eleanor had heard Manisty's cab arrive, and

his voice in the library giving his orders to Alfredo. She and Lucy Foster

and Aunt Pattie had already dispersed to their rooms. It was strange that

he should have dined in town. It had been expressly arranged on their way

to Rome that he should bring them back.

Eleanor was sitting in a low chair beside a table that carried a paraffin

lamp. At her back was the window, which was open save for the sun-shutter

outside, and the curtains, both of which had been drawn close. A manuscript

diary lay on Eleanor's lap, and she was listlessly turning it over, with

eyes that saw nothing, and hands that hardly knew what they touched. Her

head, with its aureole of loosened hair, was thrown back against the chair,

and the crude lamplight revealed each sharpened feature with a merciless

plainness. She was a woman no longer young--ill--and alone.

By the help of the entries before her she had been living the winter over

again.

How near and vivid it was,--how incredibly, tangibly near!--and yet as dead

as the Cæsars on the Palatine.

For instance:--

'November 22. To-day we worked well. Three hours this morning--nearly three

this afternoon. The survey of the financial history since 1870 is nearly

finished. I could not have held out so long, but for his eagerness, for my

head ached, and last night it seemed to me that Rome was all bells, and

that the clocks never ceased striking.

'But how his eagerness carries one through, and his frank and generous

recognition of all that one does for him! Sometimes I copy and arrange;

sometimes he dictates; sometimes I just let him talk till he has got a page

or section into shape. Even in this handling of finance, you feel the flame

that makes life with him so exciting. It is absurd to say, as his enemies

do, that he has no steadiness of purpose. I have seen him go through the

most tremendous drudgery the last few weeks,--and then throw it all into

shape with the most astonishing ease and rapidity. And he is delightful to

work with. He weighs all I say. But no false politeness! If he doesn't like

it, he frowns and bites his lip, and tears me to pieces. But very often I

prevail, and no one can yield with a better grace. People here talk of his

vanity. I don't deny it--perhaps I think it part of his charm.

'He thinks too much of me, far, far too much.

'December 16. A luncheon at the Marchesa's. The Fioravantis were there, and

some Liberal Catholics. Manisty was attacked on all sides. At first he was

silent and rather sulky--it is not always easy to draw him. Then he fired

up,--and it was wonderful how he met them all in an Italian almost as quick

as their own. I think they were amazed: certainly I was.

'Of course I sometimes wish that it were conviction with him and not

policy. My heart aches, hungers sometimes--for another note. If instead

of this praise from outside, this cool praise of religion as the great

policeman of the world, if only his voice, his dear voice, spoke for one

moment the language of faith!--all barren tension and grief and doubt would

be gone then for me, at a breath. But it never, never does. And I remind

myself--painfully--that his argument holds whether the arguer believe

or no. "Somehow or other you must get conduct out of the masses or

society goes to pieces. But you can only do this through religion. What

folly, then, for nations like Italy and France to quarrel with the only

organisation which can ever get conduct out of the ignorant!--in the way

they understand!"--It is all so true. I know it by heart--there is no

answering it. But if instead he once said to me--"Eleanor, there is a

God!--and it is He that has brought us together in this life and work,--He

that will comfort you, and open new ways for me"--Ah then--then!--

* * * * *

'Christmas Day. We went last night to the midnight mass at Santa Maria

Maggiore. Edward is always incalculable at these functions; sometimes bored

to death, sometimes all enthusiasm and sympathy. Last night the crowd

jarred him, and I wished we had not come. But as we walked home through the

moonlit streets, full of people hurrying in and out of the churches, of

the pifferari with their cloaks and pipes--black and white nuns--brown

monks--lines of scarlet seminarists, and the like, he suddenly broke out

with the prayer of the First Christmas Mass--I must give it in English, for

I have forgotten the Latin:

'"_O God, who didst cause this most holy Night to be illumined by the

rising of the true Light, we beseech Thee that we who know on earth the

secret shining of His splendour may win in Heaven His eternal joys_."

'We were passing through Monte Cavallo, beside the Two Divine Horsemen who

saved Rome of old. The light shone on the fountains--it seemed as if the

two godlike figures were just about to leap, in fierce young strength, upon

their horses.

'Edward stopped to look at them.

'"And we say that the world lives by Science! Fools! when has it lived by

anything else than Dreams--at Athens, at Rome, or Jerusalem?"

'We stayed by the fountains talking. And as we moved away, I said: "How

strange at my age to be enjoying Christmas for the first time!" And he

looked at me as though I had given him pleasure, and said with his most

delightful smile--"Who else should enjoy life if not you--kind, kind

Eleanor?"

'When I got home, and to my room, I opened my windows wide. Our apartment

is at the end of the Via Sistina, and has a marvellous view over Rome.

It was a gorgeous moon--St. Peter's, the hills, every dome and tower

radiantly clear. And at last it seemed to me that I was not a rebel and an

outlaw--that beauty and I were reconciled.

'Such peace in the night! It opened and took me in. Oh! my little, little

son!--I have had such strange visions of you all these last days. That

horror of the whirling river--and the tiny body--tossed and torn. Oh! my

God! my God!--has it not filled all my days and nights for eight years?

And now I see him so no more. I see him always carried in the arms of dim

majestic forms--wrapped close and warm. Sometimes the face that bends over

him is that of some great Giotto angel--sometimes, so dim and faint! the

pure Mother herself--sometimes the Hands that fold him in are marred. Is it

the associations of Rome--the images with which this work with Edward fills

my mind? Perhaps.

'But at least I am strangely comforted--some kind hand seems to be drawing

the smart from the deep deep wound. Little golden-head! you lie soft and

safe, but often you seem to me to turn your dear eyes--the baby-eyes that

still know all--to look out over the bar of heaven--to search for me--to

bid me be at peace, _at last_.

'February 20. How delicious is the first breath of the spring! The almond

trees are pink in the Campagna. The snow on the Sabine peaks is going. The

Piazza di Spagna is heaped with flowers--anemones and narcissus and roses.

And for the first time in my life I too feel the "Sehnsucht"--the longing

of the spring! At twenty-nine!'

'March 24, Easter week. I went to a wedding at the English church to-day.

Some barrier seems to have fallen between me and life. The bride--a dear

girl who has often been my little companion this winter--kissed me as she

was going up to take off her dress. And I threw my arms round her with such

a rush of joy. Other women have felt all these things ten years earlier

perhaps than I. But they are not less heavenly when they come late--into a

heart seared with grief.

'March 26. It is my birthday. From the window looking on the Piazza, I have

just seen Edward bargaining with the flower woman. Those lilacs and pinks

are for me--I know it! Already he has given me the little engraved emerald

I wear at my watch-chain. A little genius with a torch is cut upon it. He

said I was to take it as the genius of our friendship.

'I changed the orders for my dress to-day. I have discovered that black is

positively disagreeable to him. So Mathilda will have to devise something

else.

'April 5. He is away at Florence, and I am working at some difficult points

for him--about some suppressed monasteries. I have asked Count B--, who

knows all about such things, to help me, and am working very hard. He comes

back in four days.

'April 9. He came back to-day. Such a gay and happy evening. When he saw

what I had done, he took both my hands, and kissed them impetuously.

"Eleanor, my queen of cousins!" And now we shall be at the villa directly.

And there will be no interruption. There is one visitor coming. But Aunt

Pattie will look after her. I think the book should be out in June. Of

course there are some doubtful things. But it must, it will have a great

effect.--How wonderfully well I have been lately! The doctor last week

looked at me in astonishment. He thought that the Shadow and I were to be

soon acquainted, when he saw me first!

'I hope that Edward will get as much inspiration from the hills as from

Rome. Every little change makes me anxious. Why should we change? Dear

beloved, golden Rome!--even to be going fourteen miles away from you

somehow tears my heart.'

* * * * *

Yes, there they were, those entries,--mocking, ineffaceable, for ever.

As she had read them, driving through all the memories they suggested,

like a keen and bitter wind that kills and blights the spring bloom,

there had pressed upon her the last memory of all,--the memory of this

forlorn, this intolerable day. Had Manisty ever yet forgotten her so

completely--abandoned her so utterly? She had simply dropped out of his

thoughts. She had become as much of a stranger to him again, as on her

first arrival at Rome. Nay, more! For when two people are first brought

into a true contact, there is the secret delightful sense on either side of

possibilities, of the unexplored. But when the possibilities are all known,

and all exhausted?

What had happened between him and Lucy Foster? Of course she understood

that he had deliberately contrived their interview. But as Lucy and she

came home together they had said almost nothing to each other. She had

a vision of their two silent figures in the railway-carriage side by

side,--her hand in Lucy's. And Lucy--so sad and white herself!--with the

furrowed brow that betrayed the inner stress of thought.

Had the crisis arrived?--and had she refused him? Eleanor had not dared to

ask.

Suddenly she rose from her chair. She clasped her hands above her head,

and began to walk tempestuously up and down the bare floor of her room. In

this creature so soft, so loving, so compact of feeling and of tears, there

had gradually arisen an intensity of personal claim, a hardness, almost

a ferocity of determination, which was stiffening and transforming the

whole soul. She could waver still--as she had wavered in that despairing,

anguished moment with Lucy in the Embassy garden. But the wavering would

soon be over. A jealousy so overpowering that nothing could make itself

heard against it was closing upon her like a demoniacal possession. Was it

the last effort of self-preservation?--the last protest of the living thing

against its own annihilation?

He was not to be hers--but this treachery, this wrong should be prevented.

She thought of Lucy in Manisty's arms--of that fresh young life against his

breast--and the thought maddened her. She was conscious of a certain terror

of herself--of this fury in the veins, so strange, so alien, so debasing.

But it did not affect her will.

Was Lucy's own heart touched? Over that question Eleanor had been racking

herself for days past. But if so it could be only a passing fancy. It made

it only the more a duty to protect her from Manisty. Manisty--the soul of

caprice and wilfulness--could never make a woman like Lucy happy. He would

tire of her and neglect her. And what would be left for Lucy--Lucy the

upright, simple, profound--but heartbreak?

Eleanor paused absently in front of the glass, and then looked at herself

with a start of horror. That face--to fight with Lucy's!

On the dressing-table there were still lying the two terra-cotta heads from

Nemi, the Artemis, and the Greek fragment with the clear brow and nobly

parted hair, in which Manisty had seen and pointed out the likeness to

Lucy. Eleanor recalled his words in the garden--his smiling, absorbed look

as the girl approached.

Yes!--it was like her. There was the same sweetness in strength, the same

adorable roundness and youth.

And that was the beauty that Eleanor had herself developed and made doubly

visible--as a man may free a diamond from the clay.

A mad impulse swept through her--that touch of kinship with the criminal

and the murderer that may reveal itself in the kindest and the noblest.

She took up the little mask, and, reaching to the window, she tore back the

curtains and pushed open the sun-shutters outside.

The night burst in upon her, the starry night hanging above the immensity

of the Campagna, and the sea. There was still a faint glow in the western

heaven. On the plain were a few scattered lights, fires lit, perhaps, by

wandering herdsmen against malaria. On the far edge of the land to the

south-west, a revolving light flashed its message to the Mediterranean and

the passing ships. Otherwise, not a sign of life. Below, a vast abyss of

shadow swallowed up the olive-garden, the road, and the lower slopes of the

hills.

Eleanor felt herself leaning out above the world, alone with her agony

and the balmy peace which mocked it. She lifted her arm, and, stretching

forward, she flung the little face violently into the gulf beneath. The

villa rose high above the olive-ground, and the olive-ground itself sank

rapidly towards the road. The fragment had far to fall. It seemed to

Eleanor that in the deep stillness she heard a sound like the striking of

a stone among thick branches. Her mind followed with a wild triumph the

breaking of the terra-cotta,--the shivering of the delicate features--their

burial in the stony earth.

With a long breath she tottered from the window and sank into her chair. A

horrible feeling of illness overtook her, and she found herself gasping for

breath. 'If I could only reach that medicine on my table!' she thought. But

she could not reach it. She lay helpless.

The door opened.

Was it a dream? She seemed to struggle through rushing waters back to land.

There was a low cry. A light step hurried across the room. Lucy Foster sank

on her knees beside her and threw her arms about her.

'Give me--those drops--on the table,' said Eleanor, with difficulty.

Lucy said not a word. Quietly, with steady hands, she brought and measured

the medicine. It was a strong heart-stimulant, and it did its work. But

while her strength came back, Lucy saw that she was shivering with cold,

and closed the window.

Then, silently, Lucy looked down upon the figure in the chair. She was

almost as white as Eleanor. Her eyes showed traces of tears. Her forehead

was still drawn with thought as it had been in the train.

Presently she sank again beside Eleanor.

'I came to see you, because I could not sleep, and I wanted to suggest a

plan to you. I had no idea you were ill. You should have called me before.'

Eleanor put out a feeble hand. Lucy took it tenderly, and laid it against

her cheek. She could not understand why Eleanor looked, at her with this

horror and wildness,--how it was that she came to be up, by this open

window, in this state of illness and collapse. But the discovery only

served an antecedent process--a struggle from darkness to light--which had

brought her to Eleanor's room.

She bent forward and said some words in Eleanor's ear.

Gradually Eleanor understood and responded. She raised herself piteously

in her chair. The two women sat together, hand locked in hand, their faces

near to each other, the murmur of their voices flowing on brokenly, for

nearly an hour.

Once Lucy rose to get a guide book that lay on Eleanor's table. And on

another occasion, she opened a drawer by Eleanor's direction, took out

a leather pocket-book and counted some Italian notes that it contained.

Finally she insisted on Eleanor's going to bed, and on helping her to

undress.

Eleanor had just sunk into her pillows, when a noise from the library

startled them. Eleanor looked up with strained eyes.

'It must be Mr. Manisty,' said Lucy hurriedly. 'He was out when I came

through the glass passage. The doors were all open, and his lamp burning.'

I am nearly sure that I heard him unbar the front door. I must wait now

till he is gone.'

They waited--Eleanor staring into the darkness of the room--till there had

been much opening and shutting of doors, and all was quiet again.

Then the two women clung to each other in a strange and pitiful

embrace--offered with passion on Lucy's side, accepted with a miserable

shame on Eleanor's--and Lucy slipped away.

'He was out?--in the garden?' said Eleanor to herself bewildered. And with

those questions on her lips, and a mingled remorse and fever in her blood,

she lay sleepless waiting for the morning.

* * * * *

Manisty indeed had also been under the night, bathing passion and doubt in

its cool purity.

Again and again had he wandered up and down the terrace in the starlight,

proving and examining his own heart, raised by the growth of love to a more

manly and more noble temper than had been his for years.

What was in his way? His conduct towards his cousin? He divined what seemed

to him the scruple in the girl's sensitive and tender mind. He could only

meet it by truth and generosity--by throwing himself on Eleanor's mercy.

_She_ knew what their relations had been--she would not refuse him this

boon of life and death--the explanation of them to Lucy.

Unless! There came a moment when his restless walk was tormented with the

prickly rise of a whole new swarm of fears. He recalled that moment in

the library after the struggle with Alice, when Lucy was just awakening

from unconsciousness--when Eleanor came in upon them. Had she heard? He

remembered that the possibility of it had crossed his mind. Was she in

truth working against him--avenging his neglect--establishing a fatal

influence over Lucy?

His soul cried out in fierce and cruel protest. Here at last was the great

passion of his life. Come what would, Eleanor should not be allowed to

strangle it.

Absently he wandered down a little path leading from the terrace to the

_podere_ below, and soon found himself pacing the dim grass walks among

the olives. The old villa rose above him, dark and fortress-like. That was

no longer her room--that western corner? No--he had good cause to remember

that she had been moved, to the eastern side, beyond his library, beyond

the glass passage! Those were now Eleanor's windows, he believed.

Ah!--what was that sudden light? He threw his head back in astonishment.

One of the windows at which he had been looking was flung open, and in the

bright lamplight a figure appeared. It stooped forward. Eleanor! Something

fell close beside him. He heard the breaking of a branch from one of the

olives.

In his astonishment, he stood motionless, watching the window. It remained

open for a while. Then again some one appeared--not the same figure as

at first. A thrill of delight and trouble ran through him. He sent his

salutation, his homage through the night.

But the window shut--the light went out. All was once more still and dark.

Then he struck a match and groped under the tree close by him. Yes, there

was the fallen branch. But what had broken it? He lit match after match,

holding the light with his left hand while he turned over the dry ground

with his knife. Presently he brought up a handful of stones and earth, and

laid them on a bit of ruined wall close by. Stooping over them with his

dim, sputtering lights, he presently discovered some terra-cotta fragments.

His eye, practised in such things, detected them at once. They were the

fragments of a head, which had measured about three inches from brow to

chin.

The head, or rather the face, which he had given Eleanor at Nemi! The

parting of the hair above the brow was intact--so was the beautiful curve

of the cheek.

He knew it--and the likeness to Lucy. He remembered his words to Eleanor in

the garden. Holding the pieces in his hand, he went slowly back towards the

terrace.

Thrown out?--flung out into the night--by Eleanor? But why? He thought--and

thought. A black sense of entanglement and fate grew upon him in the

darkness, as he thought of the two women together, in the midnight silence,

while he was pacing thus, alone. He met it with the defiance of newborn

passion--with the resolute planning of a man who feels himself obscurely

threatened, and realises that his chief menace lies, not in the power of

any outside enemy, but in the very goodness of the woman he loves.

PART II.

'_Alas! there is no instinct like the heart--

The heart--which may be broken: happy they!

Thrice fortunate! who of that fragile mould,

The precious porcelain of human clay,

Break with the first fall: they can ne'er behold

The long year linked with heavy day on day,

And all which must be borne, and never told._'

CHAPTER XV

'Can you stand this heat?' said Lucy, anxiously.

'Oh, it will soon be cooler,' was Eleanor's languid reply.

She and Lucy sat side by side in a large and ancient landau; Mrs.

Burgoyne's maid, Marie Véfour, was placed opposite to them, a little sulky

and silent. On the box, beside the driver of the lean brown horses, was a

bright-eyed, neatly-dressed youth who was going with the ladies to Torre

Amiata.

They had just left the hill-town of Orvieto, had descended rapidly into

the valley lying to the south-west of its crested heights, and were now

mounting again on the further side. As they climbed higher and higher Lucy,

whose attention had been for a time entirely absorbed by the weariness

of the frail woman beside her, began to realise that they were passing

through a scene of extraordinary beauty. Her eyes, which had been drawn and

anxious, relaxed. She looked round her with a natural and rising joy.

To their left, as the road turned in zig-zag to the east, was the

marvellous town which the traveller who has seen Palestine likens to

Jerusalem, so steep and high and straight is the crest of warm brown

and orange precipice on which it stands, so deep the valleys round it,

so strange and complete the fusion between the city and the rock, so

conspicuous the place of the great cathedral, which is Orvieto, as the

Temple was Zion.

It was the sixth of June, and the day had been very hot. The road was deep

in thick white dust. The fig-trees and vines above the growing crops were

almost at a full leafiness; scarlet poppies grew thick among the corn; and

at the dusty edges of the road, wild roses of a colour singularly vivid and

deep, the blue flowers of love-in-a-mist, and some spikes of wine-coloured

gladiolus struck strangely on a northern eye.

Then as the road turned back again--behold! a great valley, opening out

westward, beyond Orvieto,--the valley of the Paglia; a valley with wooded

hills on either side, of a bluish-green colour, chequered with hill-towns

and slim campaniles and winding roads; and binding it all in one, the loops

and reaches of a full brown river. Heat everywhere!--on the blinding walls

of the buildings, on the young green of the vineyards, on the yellowing

corn, on the beautiful ragged children running barefoot and bareheaded

beside the carriage, on the peasants working among the vines, on the

drooping heads of the horses, on the brick-red face of the driver.

'If Madame had only stayed at Orvieto!' murmured Marie the maid, looking

back at the city and then at her mistress.

Eleanor smiled faintly and tapped the girl's hand.

'_Rassure-toi_, Marie! Remember how soon we made ourselves comfortable at

the villa.'

Marie shook her much be-curled head. Because it had taken them three months

to make the Marinata villa decently habitable, was that any reason for

tempting the wilderness again?

Lucy, too, had her misgivings. Nominally she was travelling, she supposed,

under Eleanor Burgoyne's chaperonage. Really she was the guardian of the

whole party, and she was conscious of a tender and anxious responsibility.

Already they had been delayed a whole week in Orvieto by Eleanor's

prostrate state. She had not been dangerously ill; but it had been clearly

impossible to leave doctor and chemist behind and plunge into the wilds. So

they had hidden themselves in a little Italian inn in a back street, and

the days had passed somehow.

* * * * *

Surely this hot evening and their shabby carriage and the dusty unfamiliar

road were all dream-stuff--an illusion from which she was to wake directly

and find herself once more in her room at Marinata, looking out on Monte

Cavo?

Yet as this passed across Lucy's mind, she felt again upon her face the

cool morning wind, as she and Eleanor fled down the Marinata hill in the

early sunlight, between six and seven o'clock,--through the streets of

Albano, already full and busy,--along the edge of that strange green crater

of Aricia, looking up to Pio Nono's great viaduct, and so to Cecchina, the

railway station in the plain.

An escape!--nothing else; planned the night before when Lucy's strong

commonsense had told her that the only chance for her own peace and

Eleanor's was to go at once, to stop any further development of the

situation, and avoid any fresh scene with Mr. Manisty.

She thought of the details--the message left for Aunt Pattie that they

had gone into Rome to shop before the heat; then the telegram 'Urgente,'

despatched to the villa after they were sure that Mr. Manisty must

have safely left it for that important field day of his clerical and

Ultramontane friends in Rome, in which he was pledged to take part; then

the arrival of the startled and bewildered Aunt Pattie at the small hotel

where they were in hiding--her conferences--first with Eleanor, then with

Lucy.

Strange little lady, Aunt Pattie! How much had she guessed? What had passed

between her and Mrs. Burgoyne? When at last she and Lucy stood together

hand in hand, the girl's sensitive spirit had divined in her a certain

stiffening, a certain diminution of that constant kindness which she had

always shown her guest. Did Aunt Pattie blame her? Had she cherished her

own views and secret hopes for her nephew and Mrs. Burgoyne? Did she feel

that Lucy had in some way unwarrantably and ambitiously interfered with

them?

At any rate, Lucy had divined the unspoken inference 'You must have given

him encouragement!' and behind it--perhaps?--the secret ineradicable pride

of family and position that held her no fitting match for Edward Manisty.

Lucy's inmost mind was still sore and shrinking from this half-hour's

encounter with Aunt Pattie.

But she had not shown it. And at the end of it Aunt Pattie had kissed

her ruefully with tears--'It's _very_ good of you! You'll take care of

Eleanor!'

Lucy could hear her own answer--'Indeed, indeed, I will!'--and Aunt

Pattie's puzzled cry, 'If only someone would tell me what I'm to do with

_him_!'

And then she recalled her own pause of wonder as Aunt Pattie left

her--beside the hotel window, looking into the narrow side street. Why

was it 'very good of her'?--and why, nevertheless, was this dislocation

of all their plans felt to be somehow her fault and responsibility?--even

by herself? There was a sudden helpless inclination to laugh over the

topsy-turviness of it all.

And then her heart had fluttered in her breast, stabbed by the memory of

Eleanor's cry the night before. 'It is of no use to say that you know

nothing--that he has said nothing. _I_ know. If you stay, he will give you

no peace--his will is indomitable. But if you go, he will guess my part in

it. I shall not have the physical strength to conceal it--and he can be

a hard man when he is resisted! What am I to do? I would go home at

once--but--I might die on the way. Why not?'

And then--in painful gasps--the physical situation had been revealed to

her--the return of old symptoms and the reappearance of arrested disease.

The fear of the physical organism alternating with the despair of the

lonely and abandoned soul,--never could Lucy forget the horror of that

hour's talk, outwardly so quiet, as she sat holding Eleanor's hands in

hers, and the floodgates of personality and of grief were opened before

her.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the patient, sweating horses climbed and climbed. Soon they were

at the brow of the hill, and looking back for their last sight of Orvieto.

And now they were on a broad tableland, a bare, sun-baked region where huge

flocks of sheep, of white, black, and brown goats wandered with ragged

shepherds over acres of burnt and thirsty pasture. Here and there were

patches of arable land and groups of tilling peasants in the wide untidy

expanse; once or twice too an _osteria_, with its bush or its wine-stained

tables under the shadow of its northern wall. But scarcely a farmhouse.

Once indeed a great building like a factory or a workhouse, in the midst of

wide sun-beaten fields. 'Ecco! la fattoria,' said the driver, pointing to

it. And once a strange group of underground dwellings, their chimneys level

with the surrounding land, whence wild swarms of troglodyte children rushed

up from the bowels of the earth to see the carriage pass and shriek for

_soldi_.

But the beauty of the sun-scorched upland was its broom! Sometimes they

were in deep tufa lanes; like English lanes, save for their walls and

canopies of gold; sometimes they journeyed through wide barren stretches,

where only broom held the soil against all comers, spreading in sheets

of gold beneath the dazzling sky. Large hawks circled overhead; in the

rare woods the nightingales were loud and merry; and goldfinches were

everywhere. A hot, lonely, thirsty land--the heart of Italy--where the

rocks are honeycombed with the tombs of that mysterious Etruscan race, the

Melchisedek of the nations, coming no one knows whence, 'without father

and without mother'--a land which has to the west of it the fever-stricken

Maremma and the heights of the Amiata range, and to the south the forest

country of Viterbo.

Eleanor looked out upon the road and the fields with eyes that faintly

remembered, and a heart held now, as always, in the grip of that _tempo

felice_ which was dead.

It was she who had proposed this journey. Once in late November she and

Aunt Pattie and Manisty had spent two or three days at Orvieto with

some Italian friends. They had made the journey back to Rome, partly by

_vetturino_, driving from Orvieto to Bolsena and Viterbo, and spending a

night on the way at a place of remote and enchanting beauty which had left

a deep mark on Eleanor's imagination. They owed the experience to their

Italian friends, acquaintances of the great proprietor whose agent gave

the whole party hospitality for the night; and as they jogged on through

this June heat she recalled with bitter longing the bright November day,

the changing leaves, the upland air, and Manisty's delight in the strange

unfamiliar country, in the vast oak woods above the Paglia, and the

marvellous church at Monte Fiascone.

But it was not the agent's house, the scene of their former stay, to which

she was now guiding Lucy. When she and Manisty, hurrying out for an early

walk before the carriage started, had explored a corner of the dense oak

woods below the _palazzo_ on the hill, they had come across a deserted

convent, with a contadino's family in one corner of it, and a ruinous

chapel with a couple of dim frescoes attributed to Pinturicchio.

How well she remembered Manisty's rage over the spoliation of the convent

and the ruin of the chapel! He had gone stalking over the deserted place,

raving against 'those brigands from Savoy,' and calculating how much it

would cost to buy back the place from the rascally Municipio of Orvieto, to

whom it now belonged, and return it to its former Carmelite owners.

Meanwhile Eleanor had gossiped with the _massaja_, or farmer's wife, and

had found out that there were a few habitable rooms in the convent still,

roughly furnished, and that in summer, people of a humble sort came there

sometimes from Orvieto for coolness and change--the plateau being 3,000

feet above the sea. Eleanor had inquired if English people ever came.

'_Inglesi! no!--mai Inglesi_,' said the woman in astonishment.

The family were, however, in some sort of connection with an hotel

proprietor at Orvieto, through whom they got their lodgers. Eleanor had

taken down the name and all particulars in a fit of enthusiasm for the

beauty and loneliness of the place. 'Suppose some day we came here to

write?' Manisty had said vaguely, looking round him with regret as they

drove away. The mere suggestion had made the name of Torre Amiata sweet to

Eleanor thenceforward.

Was it likely that he would remember?--that he would track them? Hardly. He

would surely think that in this heat they would go northward. He would not

dream of looking for them in Italy.

She too was thinking of nothing--nothing!--but the last scenes at the villa

and in Rome, as the carriage moved along. The phrases of her letter to

Manisty ran through her mind. Had they made him her lasting enemy? The

thought was like a wound draining blood and strength. But in her present

state of jealous passion it was more tolerable than that other thought

which was its alternative--the thought of Lucy surrendered, Lucy in her

place.

'Lucy Foster is with me,' she had written. 'We wish to be together for a

while before she goes back to America. And that we may be quite alone, we

prefer to give no address for a few weeks. I have written to Papa to say

that I am going away for a time with a friend, to rest and recruit. You and

Aunt Pattie could easily arrange that there should be no talk and no gossip

about the matter. I hope and think you will. Of course if we are in any

strait or difficulty we shall communicate at once with our friends.'

How had he received it? Sometimes she thought of his anger and

disappointment with terror, sometimes with a vindictive excitement that

poisoned all her being. Gentleness turned to hate and violence,--was it of

that in truth, and not of that heart mischief to which doctors gave long

names, that Eleanor Burgoyne was dying?

* * * * *

They had turned into a wide open space crossed by a few wire fences at vast

intervals. The land was mostly rough pasture, or mere sandy rock and scrub.

In the glowing west, towards which they journeyed, rose far purple peaks

peering over the edge of the great tableland. To the east and south vast

woods closed in the horizon.

The carriage left the main road and entered an ill-defined track leading

apparently through private property.

'Ah! I remember!' cried Eleanor, starting up. 'There is the _palazzo_--and

the village.'

In front of them, indeed, rose an old villa of the Renaissance, with its

long flat roofs, its fine _loggia_, and terraced vineyards. A rude village

of grey stone, part, it seemed, of the tufa rocks from which it sprang,

pressed round the villa, invaded its olive-gardens, crept up to its very

walls. Meanwhile the earth grew kinder and more fertile. The vines and figs

stood thick again among the green corn and flowering lucerne. Peasants

streaming home from work, the men on donkeys, the women carrying their

babies, met the carriage and stopped to stare after it, and talk.

Suddenly from the ditches of the roadside sprang up two martial figures.

'Carabinieri!' cried Lucy in delight.

She had made friends with several members of this fine corps on the closely

guarded roads about the Alban lake, and to see them here gave her a sense

of protection.

Bending over the side of the carriage, she nodded to the two handsome

brown-skinned fellows, who smiled back at her.

'How far,' she said, 'to Santa Trinità?'

'_Un miglio grasso_ (a good mile), Signorina. _È tutto_. But you are late.

They expected you half an hour ago.'

The driver took this for reproach, and with a shrill burst of defence

pointed to his smoking horses. The Carabinieri laughed, and diving into the

field, one on either side, they kept up with the carriage as it neared the

village.

'Why, it is like coming home!' said Lucy, wondering. And indeed they were

now surrounded by the whole village population, just returned from the

fields--pointing, chattering, laughing, shouting friendly directions to the

driver. 'Santa Trinità!' 'Ecco!--Santa Trinità!' sounded on all sides, amid

a forest of gesticulating hands.

'How could they know?' said Eleanor, looking at the small crowd with

startled eyes. Lucy spoke a word to the young man on the box.

'They knew, he says, as soon as the carriage was ordered yesterday. Look!

there are the telegraph wires! The whole countryside knows! They are

greatly excited by the coming of _forestieri_--especially at this time of

year.'

'Oh! we can't stay!' said Eleanor with a little moan, wringing her hands.

'It's only the country people,' said Lucy tenderly, taking one of the hands

in hers. 'Did you see the Contessa when you were here before?'

And she glanced up at the great yellow mass of the _palazzo_ towering above

the little town, the sunset light flaming on its long western face.

'No. She was away. And the _fattore_ who took us in left in January. There

is a new man.'

'Then it's quite safe!' said Lucy in French. And her kind deep eyes looked

steadily into Eleanor's, as though mutely cheering and supporting her.

Eleanor unconsciously pressed her hand upon her breast. She was looking

round her in a sudden anguish of memory. For, now they were through the

village, they were descending--they were in the woods. Ah! the white walls

of the convent--the vacant windows in its ruined end--and at the gate

of the rough farmyard that surrounded it the stalwart _capoccia_, the

grinning, harsh-featured wife that she remembered.

She stepped feebly down upon the dusty road. When her feet last pressed it,

Manisty was beside her, and the renewing force of love and joy was filling

all the sources of her being.

CHAPTER XVI

'Can you bear it? Can you be comfortable?' said Lucy, in some dismay.

They were in one of the four or five bare rooms that had been given up to

them. A bed with a straw palliasse, one or two broken chairs, and bits of

worm-eaten furniture filled what had formerly been one of a row of cells

running along an upper corridor. The floor was of brick and very dirty.

Against the wall a tattered canvas, a daub of St. Laurence and his

gridiron, still recalled the former uses of the room.

They had given orders for a few comforts to be sent out from Orvieto, but

the cart conveying them had not yet arrived. Meanwhile Marie was crying in

the next room, and the _contadina_ was looking on astonished and a little

sulky. The people who came from Orvieto never complained. What was wrong

with the ladies?

Eleanor looked round her with a faint smile.

'It doesn't matter,' she said under her breath. Then she looked at Lucy.

'What care we take of you! How well we look after you!'

And she dropped her head on her hands in a fit of hysterical laughter--very

near to sobs.

'I!' cried Lucy. 'As if I couldn't sleep anywhere, and eat anything! But

you--that's another business. When the cart comes, we can fix you up a

little better--but to-night!'

She looked, frowning, round the empty room.

'There is nothing to do anything with--or I'd set to work right away.'

'Ecco, Signora!' said the farmer's wife. She carried triumphantly in her

hands a shaky carpet-chair, the only article of luxury apparently that the

convent provided.

Eleanor thanked her, and the woman stood with her hands on her hips,

surveying them. She frowned, but only because she was thinking hard how

she could somehow propitiate these strange beings, so well provided, as it

seemed, with superfluous _lire_.

'Ah!' she cried suddenly; 'but the ladies have not seen our _bella

vista_!--our _loggia_! Santa Madonna! but I have lost my senses! Signorina!

_venga--venga lei_.'

And beckoning to Lucy she pulled open a door that had remained unnoticed in

the corner of the room.

Lucy and Eleanor followed.

Even Eleanor joined her cry of delight to Lucy's.

'Ecco!' said the _massaja_ proudly, as though the whole landscape were her

chattel,--'Monte Amiata! Selvapendente--the Paglia--does the Signora see

the bridge down there?--_veda lei_, under Selvapendente? Those forests on

the mountain there--they belong all to the Casa Guerrini--_tutto, tutto_!

as far as the Signorina can see! And that little house there, on the

hill--that _casa di caccia_--that was poor Don Emilio's, that was killed in

the war.'

And she chattered on, in a _patois_ not always intelligible, even to

Eleanor's trained ear, about the widowed Contessa, her daughter, and her

son; about the new roads that Don Emilio had made through the woods; of the

repairs and rebuilding at the Villa Guerrini--all stopped since his death;

of the Sindaco of Selvapendente, who often came up to Torre Amiata for the

summer; of the nuns in the new convent just built there under the hill, and

their _fattore_,--whose son was with Don Emilio after he was wounded, when

the poor young man implored his own men to shoot him and put him out of his

pain--who had stayed with him till he died, and had brought his watch and

pocket-book back to the Contessa--

'Is the Contessa here?' said Eleanor, looking at the woman with the

strained and startled air that was becoming habitual to her, as though each

morsel of passing news only served somehow to make life's burden heavier.

But certainly the Contessa was here! She and Donna Teresa were always at

the Villa. Once they used to go to Rome and Florence part of the year, but

now--no more!

A sudden uproar arose from below--of crying children and barking dogs. The

woman threw up her hands. 'What are they doing to me with the baby?' she

cried, and disappeared.

Lucy went back to fetch the carpet-chair. She caught up also a couple of

Florentine silk blankets that were among their wraps. She laid them on

the bricks of the _loggia_, found a rickety table in Eleanor's room, her

travelling-bag, and a shawl.

'Don't take such trouble about me!' said Eleanor, almost piteously, as Lucy

established her comfortably in the chair, with a shawl over her knees and a

book or two beside her.

Lucy with a soft little laugh stooped and kissed her.

'Now I must go and dry Marie's tears. Then I shall dive downstairs and

discover the kitchen. They say they've got a cook, and the dinner'll soon

be ready. Isn't that lovely? And I'm sure the cart'll be here directly.

It's the most beautiful place I ever saw in my life!' said Lucy, clasping

her hands a moment in a gesture familiar to her, and turning towards the

great prospect of mountain, wood, and river. 'And it's so strange--so

strange! It's like another Italy! Why, these woods--they might be just in a

part of Maine I know. You can't see a vineyard--not one. And the air--isn't

it fresh? Isn't it lovely? Wouldn't you guess you were three thousand feet

up? I just know this--we're going to make you comfortable. I'm going right

down now to send that cart back to Orvieto for a lot of things. And you're

going to get ever, ever so much better, aren't you? Say you will!'

The girl fell on her knees beside Eleanor, and took the other's thin

hands into her own. Her face, thrown back, had lost its gaiety; her mouth

quivered.

Eleanor met the girl's tender movement dry-eyed. For the hundredth time

that day she asked herself the feverish, torturing question--'Does she love

him?'

'Of course I shall get better,' she said lightly, stroking the girl's hair;

'or if not--what matter?'

Lucy shook her head.

'You must get better,' she said in a low, determined voice. 'And it must

all come right.'

Eleanor was silent. In her own heart she knew more finally, more

irrevocably every hour that for her it would never come right. But how say

to Lucy that her whole being hung now--not on any hope for herself, but on

the fierce resolve that there should be none for Manisty?

Lucy gave a long sigh, rose to her feet, and went off to household duties.

Eleanor was left alone. Her eyes, bright with fever, fixed themselves,

unseeing, on the sunset sky, and the blue, unfamiliar peaks beneath it.

Cheerful sounds of rioting children and loud-voiced housewives came from

below. Presently there was a distant sound of wheels, and the _carro_ from

Orvieto appeared, escorted by the whole village, who watched its unpacking

with copious comment on each article, and a perpetual scuffling for places

in the front line of observation. Even the _padre parroco_ and the doctor

paused as they passed along the road, and Lucy as she flitted about caught

sight of the smiling young priest, in his flat broad-brimmed hat and caped

soutane, side by side with the meditative and gloomy countenance of the

doctor, who stood with his legs apart, smoking like a chimney.

But Lucy had no time to watch the crowd. She was directing the men with

the _carro_ where to place the cooking-stove that had been brought from

Orvieto, in the dark and half-ruinous kitchen on the lower floor of the

convent; marvelling the while at the _risotto_ and the _pollo_ that the

local artist, their new cook, the sister of the farmer's wife, was engaged

in producing, out of apparently nothing in the way either of fire or tools.

She was conferring with Cecco the little manservant, who, with less polish

than Alfredo, but with a like good-will, was running hither and thither,

intent only on pleasing his ladies, and on somehow finding enough spoons

and forks to lay a dinner-table with; or she was alternately comforting and

laughing at Marie, who was for the moment convinced that Italy was pure and

simple Hades, and Torre Amiata the lowest gulf thereof.

Thus--under the soft, fresh evening--the whole forlorn and ruinous building

was once more alive with noise and gaiety, with the tread of men carrying

packages, with the fun of skirmishing children, with the cries of the cook

and Cecco, with Lucy's stumbling yet sweet Italian.

Eleanor only was alone--but how terribly alone!

She sat where Lucy had left her--motionless--her hands hanging listlessly.

She had been always thin, but in the last few weeks she had become a

shadow. Her dress had lost its old perfection, though its carelessness was

still the carelessness of instinctive grace, of a woman who could not throw

on a shawl or a garden-hat without a natural trick of hand, that held even

through despair and grief. The delicacy and emaciation of the face had now

gone far beyond the bounds of beauty. It spoke of disease, and drew the

pity of the passer-by.

Her loneliness grew upon her--penetrated and pursued her. She could not

resign herself to it. She was always struggling with it, beating it away,

as a frightened child might struggle with the wave that overwhelms it on

the beach. A few weeks ago she had been so happy, so rich in friends--the

world had been so warm and kind!

And now it seemed to her that she had no friends; no one to whom she could

turn; no one she wished to see, except this girl--this girl she had known

barely a couple of months--by whom she had been made desolate!

She thought of those winter gatherings in Rome which she had enjoyed with

so keen a pleasure; the women she had liked, who had liked her in return,

to whom her eager wish to love and be loved had made her delightful. But

beneath her outward sweetness she carried a proud and often unsuspected

reserve. She had made a _confidante_ of no one. That her relation to

Manisty was accepted and understood in Rome; that it was regarded as

a romance, with which it was not so much ill-natured as ridiculous to

associate a breath of scandal--a romance which all kind hearts hoped might

end as most of such things should end--all this she knew. She had been

proud of her place beside him, proud of Rome's tacit recognition of her

claim upon him. But she had told her heart to nobody. Her wild scene with

Lucy stood out unique, unparalleled in the story of her life.

And now there was no one she craved to see--not one. With the instinct of

the stricken animal she turned from her kind. Her father? What had he ever

been to her? Aunt Pattie? Her very sympathy and pity made Eleanor thankful

to be parted from her. Other kith and kin? No! Happy, she could have loved

them; miserable, she cared for none of them. Her unlucky marriage had

numbed and silenced her for years. From that frost the waters of life had

been loosened, only to fail now at their very source.

Her whole nature was one wound. At the moment when, standing spell-bound in

the shadow, she had seen Manisty stooping over the unconscious Lucy, and

had heard his tender breathless words, the sword had fallen, dividing the

very roots of being.

And now--strange irony!--the only heart on which she leant, the only hand

to which she clung, were the heart and the hand of Lucy!

'Why, why are we here?' she cried to herself with a sudden change of

position and of anguish.

Was not their flight a mere absurdity?--humiliation for herself, since it

revealed what no woman should reveal--but useless, ridiculous as any check

on Manisty! Would he give up Lucy because she might succeed in hiding

her for a few weeks? Was that passionate will likely to resign itself to

the momentary defeat she had inflicted on it? Supposing she succeeded in

despatching Lucy to America without any further interview between them; are

there no steamers and trains to take impatient lovers to their goal? What

childish folly was the whole proceeding!

And would she even succeed so far? Might he not even now be on their track?

How possible that he should remember this place--its isolation--and her

pleasure in it! She started in her chair. It seemed to her that she already

heard his feet upon the road.

Then her thought rebounded in a fierce triumph, an exultation that shook

the feeble frame. She was secure! She was entrenched, so to speak, in

Lucy's heart. Never would that nature grasp its own joy at the cost of

another's agony. No! no!--she is not in love with him!--the poor hurrying

brain insisted. She has been interested, excited, touched. That, he can

always achieve with any woman, if he pleases. But time and change soon

wear down these first fancies of youth. There is no real congruity between

them--there never, never could be.

But supposing it were not so--supposing Lucy could be reached and affected

by Manisty's pursuit, still Eleanor was safe. She knew well what had been

the effect, what would now be the increasing effect of her weakness and

misery on Lucy's tender heart. By the mere living in Lucy's sight she would

gain her end. From the first she had realised the inmost quality of the

girl's strong and diffident personality. What Manisty feared she counted

on.

Sometimes, just for a moment, as one may lean over the edge of a precipice,

she imagined herself yielding, recalling Manisty, withdrawing her own

claim, and the barrier raised by her own vindictive agony. The mind sped

along the details that might follow--the girl's loyal resistance--Manisty's

ardour--Manisty's fascination--the homage and the seduction, the quarrels

and the impatience with which he would surround her--the scenes in which

Lucy's reserve mingling with her beauty would but evoke on the man's side

all the ingenuity, all the delicacy of which he was capable--and the final

softening of that sweet austerity which hid Lucy's heart of gold.--

No!--Lucy had no passion!--she would tell herself with a feverish, an angry

vehemence. How would she ever bear with Manisty, with the alternate excess

and defect of his temperament?

And suddenly, amid the shadows of the past winter Eleanor would see

herself writing, and Manisty stooping over her,--his hand taking her pen,

his shoulder touching hers. His hand was strong, nervous, restless like

himself. Her romantic imagination that was half natural, half literary,

delighted to trace in it both caprice and power. When it touched her own

slender fingers, it seemed to her they could but just restrain themselves

from nestling into his. She would draw herself back in haste, lest some

involuntary movement should betray her. But not before the lightning

thought had burnt its way through her--'What if one just fell back

against his breast--and all was said--all ventured in a moment!

Afterwards--ecstasy, or despair--what matter!'--

When would Lucy have dared even such a dream? Eleanor's wild jealousy would

secretly revenge itself on the girl's maidenly coldness, on the young

stiffness, Manisty had once mocked at. How incredible that she should have

attracted him!--how, impossible that she should continue to attract him!

All Lucy's immaturities and defects passed through Eleanor's analysing

thought.

For a moment she saw her coldly, odiously, as an enemy might see her.

And then!--quick revulsion--a sudden loathing of herself--a sudden terror

of these new meannesses and bitterness that were invading her, stealing

from her her very self, robbing her of the character that unconsciously

she had loved in herself, as other people loved it--knowing that in deed

and truth she was what others thought her to be, kind, and gentle, and

sweet-natured.

And last of all--poor soul!--an abject tenderness and repentance towards

Lucy, which yet brought no relief, because it never affected for an instant

the fierce tension of will beneath.

A silvery night stole upon the sunset, absorbed, transmuted all the golds

and crimsons of the west into its own dimly shining blue.

Eleanor was in bed; Lucy's clever hands had worked wonders with her room;

and now Eleanor had been giving quick remorseful directions to Marie to

concern herself a little with Miss Foster's comfort and Miss Foster's

luggage.

Lucy escaped from the rooms littered with trunks and clothes. She took

her hat and a light cape, and stole out into the broad passage, on either

side of which opened the long series of small rooms which had once been

Carmelite cells. Only the four or five rooms at the western end, the bare

'apartment' which they occupied, were still whole and water-tight. Half-way

down the passage, as Lucy had already discovered, you came to rooms where

the windows had no glass and the plaster had dropped from the walls, and

the ceilings hung down in great gaps and rags of ruin. There was a bay

window at the eastern end of the passage, which had been lately glazed

for the summer tenants' sake. The rising moon streamed through on the

desolation of the damp-stained walls and floors. And a fresh upland wind

was beginning to blow and whistle through the empty and windowless cells.

Even Lucy shivered a little. It was perhaps not wonderful that the French

maid should be in revolt.

Then she went softly down an old stone staircase to the lower floor. Here

was the same long passage with rooms on either side, but in even worse

condition. At the far end was a glow of light and a hum of voices, coming

from the corner of the building occupied by the _contadino_, and their own

kitchen. But between the heavy front door, that Lucy was about to open,

and the distant light, was an earthen floor full of holes and gaps, and

on either side--caverns of desolation--the old wine and oil stores, the

kitchens and wood cellars of the convent, now black dens avoided by the

cautious, and dark even at midday because of the rough boarding-up of the

windows. There was a stable smell in the passage, and Lucy already knew

that one of the further dens held the _contadino's_ donkey and mule.

'_Can_ we stay here?' she said to herself, half laughing, half doubtful.

Then she lifted the heavy iron bar that closed the old double door, and

stepped out into the courtyard that surrounded the convent, half of which

was below the road as it rapidly descended from the village, and half above

it.

She took a few steps to the right.

Exquisite!

There opened out before her a little cloister, with double shafts carrying

Romanesque arches; and at the back of the court, the chapel, and a tiny

bell-tower. The moon shone down on every line and moulding. Under its

light, stucco and brick turned to ivory and silver. There was an absolute

silence, an absolute purity of air; and over all the magic of beauty and of

night. Lucy thought of the ruined frescoes in the disused chapel, of the

faces of saints and angels looking out into the stillness.

Then she mounted some steps to the road, and turned downwards towards the

forest that crept up round them on all sides.

Ah! was there yet another portion of the convent?--a wing running at right

angles to the main building in which they were established, and containing

some habitable rooms? In the furthest window of all was a light, and a

figure moving across it. A tall black figure--surely a priest? Yes!--as

the form came nearer to the window, seen from the back, Lucy perceived

distinctly the tonsured head and the soutane.

How strange! She had heard nothing from the _massaja_ of any other tenant.

And this tall gaunt figure had nothing in common with the little smiling

_parroco_ she had seen in the crowd.

She moved on, wondering.

Oh, those woods! How they sank, like great resting clouds below her, to the

shining line of the river, and rose again on the further side! They were

oak woods, and spoke strangely to Lucy of the American and English north.

Yet, as she came nearer, the moon shone upon delicate undergrowth of heath

and arbutus, that chid her fancy back to the 'Saturnian land.'

And beyond all, the blue mountains, ætherially light, like dreams on the

horizon; and above all, the radiant serenity of the sky.

Ah! there spoke the nightingales, and that same melancholy note of the

little brown owl which used to haunt the olive grounds of Marinata. Lucy

held her breath. The tears rushed into her eyes--tears of memory, tears of

longing.

But she drove them back. Standing on a little cleared space beside the road

that commanded the whole night scene, she threw herself into the emotion

and poetry which could be yielded to without remorse, without any unnerving

of the will. How far, far she was from Uncle Ben, and that shingled house

in Vermont! It was near midsummer, and all the English and Americans had

fled from this Southern Italy. Italy was at home, and at ease in her own

house, living her own rich immemorial life, knowing and thinking nothing of

the foreigner. Nor indeed on those uplands and in those woods had she ever

thought of him; though below in the valley ran the old coach road from

Florence to Rome, on which Goethe and Winckelmann had journeyed to the

Eternal City. Lucy felt as though, but yesterday a tourist and stranger,

she had now crept like a child into the family circle. Nay, she had raised

a corner of Italy's mantle, and drawn close to the warm breast of one of

the great mother-lands of the world.

Ah! but feeling sweeps fast and far, do what we will. Soon she was

struggling out of her depth. These weeks of rushing experience had been

loosening soul and tongue. To-night how she could have talked of these

things to one now parted from her, perhaps for ever! How he would have

listened to her--impatiently often! How he would have mocked and rent her!

But then the quick softening--and the beautiful kindling eye--the dogmatism

at once imperative and sweet--the tyranny that a woman might both fight and

love!

Yet how painful was the thought of Manisty! She was ashamed--humiliated.

Their flight assumed as a certainty what after all, let Eleanor say what

she would, he had never, never said to her--what she had no clear authority

to believe. Where was he? What was he thinking? For a moment, her heart

fluttered towards him like a homing bird.

Then in a sharp and stern reaction she rebuked, she chastened herself.

Standing there in the night, above the forests, looking over to the dim

white cliffs on the side of Monte Amiata, she felt herself, in this strange

and beautiful land, brought face to face with calls of the spirit, with

deep voices of admonition and pity that rose from her own inmost being.

With a long sigh, like one that lifts a weight she raised her young arms

above her head, and then brought her hands down slowly upon her eyes,

shutting out sight and sense. There was a murmur--

'Mother!--darling mother!--if you were just here--for one hour--'

She gathered up the forces of the soul.

'So help me God!' she said. And then she started, perceiving into what

formula she had slipped, unwittingly.

* * * * *

She moved on a few paces down the road, meaning just to peep into the woods

and their scented loneliness. The night was so lovely she was loth to leave

it.

Suddenly she became aware of a point of light in front, and the smell of

tobacco.

A man rose from the wayside. Lucy stayed her foot, and was about to retreat

swiftly when she heard a cheerful--

'Buona sera, Signorina!' She recognised a voice of the afternoon. It was

the handsome carabiniere. Lucy advanced with alacrity.

'I came out because it was so fine,' she said. 'Are you on duty still?

Where is your companion?'

He smiled, and pointed to the wood. 'We have a hut there. First Ruggieri

sleeps--then I sleep. We don't often come this way; but when there are

_forestieri_, then we must look out.'

'But there are no brigands here?'

He showed his white teeth. 'I shot two once with this gun,' he said,

producing it.

'But not here?' she said, startled.

'No--but beyond the mountains--over there--in Maremma.' He waved his

hand vaguely towards the west. Then he shook his head. 'Bad country--bad

people--in Maremma.'

'Oh yes, I know,' said Lucy, laughing. 'If there is anything bad here, you

say it comes from Maremma. When our harness broke this afternoon our driver

said, "_Che vuole?_ It was made in Maremma!"--Tell me--who lives in that

part of the convent--over there?'

And, turning back, she pointed to the distant window and the light.

The man spat upon the road without replying. After replenishing his pipe he

said slowly: 'That, Signorina, is a _forestiere_, too.'

'A priest--isn't it?'

'A priest--and not a priest,' said the man after another pause.

Then he laughed, with the sudden _insouciance_ of the Italian.

'A priest that doesn't say his Mass!--that's a queer sort of priest--isn't

it?'

'I don't understand,' said Lucy.

'_Per Dio!_ what does it matter?' said the man, laughing. 'The people here

wouldn't trouble their heads, only--But you understand, Signorina'--he

dropped his voice a little--'the priests have much power--_molto, molto_!

Don Teodoro, the _parroco_ there,--it was he founded the _cassa rurale_.

If a _contadino_ wants some money for his seed-corn--or to marry his

daughter--or to buy himself a new team of oxen--he must go to the

_parroco_. Since these new banks began, it is the priests that have the

money--_capisce?_ If you want it you must ask them! So you understand,

Signorina, it doesn't profit to fall out with them. You must love their

friends, and--' His grin and gesture finished the sentence.

'But what's the matter?' said Lucy, wondering. 'Has he committed any

crime?' And she looked curiously at the figure in the convent window.

'_È un prete spretato, Signorina._'

'_Spretato_?' (unpriested--unfrocked). The word was unfamiliar to her. She

frowned over it.

'_Scomunicato!_' said the _carabiniere_, with a laugh.

'Excommunicated?' She felt a thrill of pity, mingled with a vague horror.

'Why?--what has he done?'

The _carabiniere_ laughed again. The laugh was odious, but she was already

acquainted with that strange instinct of the lower-class Italian which

leads him to make mock of calamity. He has passion, but no sentiment; he

instinctively hates the pathetic.

'_Chi sa, Signorina?_ He seems a quiet old man. We keep a sharp eye on him;

he won't do any harm. He used to give the children _confetti_, but the

mothers have forbidden them to take them. Gianni there'--he pointed to the

convent, and Lucy understood that he referred to the _contadino_--'Gianni

went to Don Teodoro, and asked if he should turn him out. But Don Teodoro

wouldn't say Yes or No. He pays well, but the village want him to go. They

say he will bring them ill-luck with their harvest.'

'And the _Padre parroco_? Does he not speak to him?'

Antonio laughed.

'When Don Teodoro passes him on the road he doesn't see him--_capisce_,

Signorina? And so with all the other priests. When he comes by they have no

eyes. The Bishop sent the word.'

'And everybody here does what the priests tell them?'

Lucy's tone expressed that instinctive resentment which the Puritan feels

against a ruling and dominant Catholicism.

Antonio laughed again, but a little stupidly. It was the laugh of a man who

knows that it is not worth while even to begin to explain certain matters

to a stranger.

'They understand their business--_i preti!_'--was all he would say.

Then--'_Ma!_--they are rich--the priests! All these last years--so many

banks--so many _casse_--so many _societâ_! That holds the people better

than prayers.'

* * * * *

When Lucy turned homewards she found herself watching the light in the far

window with an eager attention. A priest in disgrace?--and a foreigner?

What could he be hiding here for?--in this remote corner of a district

which, as they had been already told at Orvieto, was Catholic, _fino al

fanatismo_?

* * * * *

The morning rose, fresh and glorious, over mountain and forest.

Eleanor watched the streaks of light that penetrated through the wooden

sun-shutters grow brighter and brighter on the white-washed wall. She was

weary of herself, weary of the night. The old building was full of strange

sounds--of murmurs and resonances, of slight creepings and patterings, that

tried the nerves. Her room communicated with Lucy's, and their doors were

provided with bolts, the newness of which, perhaps, testified to the fears

of other summer tenants before them. Nevertheless, Eleanor had been a prey

to starts and terrors, and her night had passed in a bitter mingling of

moral strife and physical discomfort.

Seven o'clock striking from the village church. She slipped to her feet.

Ready to her hand lay one of the soft and elegant wrappers--fresh, not long

ago, from Paris--as to which Lucy had often silently wondered how anyone

could think it right to spend so much money on such things.

Eleanor, of course, was not conscious of the smallest reproach in the

matter. Dainty and costly dress was second nature to her; she never thought

about it. But this morning as she first took up the elaborate silken thing,

to which pale girls in hot Parisian workrooms had given so much labour

of hand and head, and then caught sight of her own face and shoulders

in the cracked glass upon the wall, she was seized with certain ghastly

perceptions that held her there motionless in the semi-darkness, shivering

amid the delicate lace and muslin which enwrapped her. Finished!--for

her--all the small feminine joys. Was there one of her dresses that did not

in some way speak to her of Manisty?--that had not been secretly planned

with a view to tastes and preferences she had come to know hardly less

intimately than her own?

She thought of the face of the Orvieto doctor, of certain words that she

had stopped on his lips because she was afraid to hear them. A sudden

terror of death,--of the desolate, desolate end swept upon her. To die,

with this cry of the heart unspent, untold for ever! Unloved, unsatisfied,

unrewarded--she whose whole nature gave itself--gave itself perpetually, as

a wave breaks upon a barren shore. How can any God send human beings into

the world for such a lot? There can be no God. But how is the riddle

easier, for thinking Him away?

When at last she rose, it was to make quietly for the door opening on the

_loggia_.

Still there, this radiant marvel of the world!--this pageant of rock and

stream and forest, this pomp of shining cloud, this silky shimmer of the

wheat, this sparkle of flowers in the grass; while human hearts break, and

human lives fail, and the graveyard on the hill yonder packs closer and

closer its rows of metal crosses and wreaths!

Suddenly, from a patch of hayfield on the further side of the road, she

heard a voice singing. A young man, tall and well made, was mowing in a

corner of the field. The swathes fell fast before him: every movement spoke

of an assured rejoicing strength. He sang with the sharp stridency which is

the rule in Italy--the words clear, the sounds nasal.

Gradually Eleanor made out that the song was the farewell of a maiden to

her lover who is going for winter work to the Maremma.

The labourers go to Maremma--

Oh! 'tis long till the days of June,

And my heart is all in a flutter

Alone here, under the moon.

O moon!--all this anguish and sorrow!

Thou know'st why I suffer so--

Oh! send him me back from Maremma,

Where he goes, and I must not go!

The man sang the little song carelessly, commonly, without a thought of

the words, interrupting himself every now and then to sharpen his scythe,

and then beginning again. To Eleanor it seemed the natural voice of the

morning; one more, echo of the cry of universal parting, now for a day, now

for a season, now for ever--which fills the world.

* * * * *

She was too restless to enjoy the _loggia_ and the view, too restless

to go back to bed. She pushed back the door between her and Lucy, only

to see that Lucy was still fast asleep. But there were voices and stops

downstairs. The farm-people had been abroad for hours.

She made a preliminary toilette, took her hat, and stole downstairs. As she

opened the outer door the children caught sight of her and came crowding

round, large-eyed, their fingers in their mouths. She turned towards the

chapel and the little cloister that she remembered. The children gave a

shout and swooped back into the convent. And when she reached the chapel

door, there they were on her skirts again, a big boy brandishing the key.

Eleanor took it and parleyed with them. They were to go away and leave

her alone--quite alone. Then when she came back they should have _soldi_.

The children nodded shrewdly, withdrew in a swarm to the corner of the

cloister, and watched events.

Eleanor entered. From some high lunette windows the cool early sunlight

came creeping and playing into the little whitewashed place. On either hand

two cinque-cento frescoes had been rescued from the whitewash. They shone

like delicate flowers on the rough, yellowish-white of the walls; on one

side a martyrdom of St. Catharine, on the other a Crucifixion. Their pale

blues and lilacs, their sharp pure greens and thin crimsons, made subtle

harmony with the general lightness and cleanness of the abandoned chapel.

A poor little altar with a few tawdry furnishings at the further end, a

confessional box falling to pieces with age, and a few chairs--these were

all that it contained besides.

Eleanor sank kneeling beside one of the chairs. As she looked round her,

physical weakness and the concentration of all thought on one subject and

one person made her for the moment the victim of an illusion so strong that

it was almost an 'apparition of the living.'

Manisty stood before her, in the rough tweed suit he had worn in November,

one hand, holding his hat, upon his hip, his curly head thrown back, his

eyes just turning from the picture to meet hers; eyes always eagerly

confident, whether their owner pronounced on the affinities of a picture or

the fate of a country.

'School of Pinturicchio certainly!--but local work. Same hand--don't

you think so?--as in that smaller chapel in the cathedral. Eleanor! you

remember?'

She gave a gasp, and hid her face, shaking. Was this haunting of eye and

ear to pursue her now henceforward? Was the passage of Manisty's being

through the world to be--for her--ineffaceable?--so that earth and air

retained the impress of his form and voice, and only her tortured heart and

sense were needed to make the phantom live and walk and speak again?

She began to pray--brokenly and desperately, as she had often prayed during

the last few weeks. It was a passionate throwing of the will against a

fate, cruel, unjust, intolerable; a means not to self-renunciation, but to

a self-assertion which was in her like madness, so foreign was it to all

the habits of the soul.

'That he should make use of me to the last moment, then fling me to the

winds--that I should just make room, and help him to his goal--and then die

meekly--out of the way--No! He too shall suffer!--and he shall know that it

is Eleanor who exacts it!--Eleanor who bars the way!'

And in the very depths of consciousness there emerged the strange and

bitter recognition that from the beginning she had allowed him to hold

her cheaply; that she had been content, far, far too content, with what

he chose to give; that if she had claimed more, been less delicate, less

exquisite in loving, he might have feared and regarded her more.

She heard the chapel door open. But at the same moment she became aware

that her face was bathed in tears, and she did not dare to look round. She

drew down her veil, and composed herself as she best could.

The person behind, apparently, also knelt down. The tread and movements

were those of a heavy man--some countryman, she supposed.

But his neighbourhood was unwelcome, and the chapel ceased to be a place

of refuge where feeling might have its way. In a few minutes she rose and

turned towards the door.

She gave a little cry. The man kneeling at the back of the chapel rose in

astonishment and came towards her.

'Madame!'

'Father Benecke! _you_ here,' said Eleanor, leaning against the wall for

support--so weak was she, and so startling was this sudden apparition of

the man whom she had last seen on the threshold of the glass passage at

Marinata, barely a fortnight before.

'I fear, Madame, that I intrude upon you,' said the old priest, staring at

her with embarrassment. 'I will retire.'

'No, no,' said Eleanor, putting out her hand, with some recovery of her

normal voice and smile. 'It was only so--surprising; so--unexpected. Who

could have thought of finding you here, Father?'

The priest did not reply. They left the chapel together. The knot of

waiting children in the cloister, as soon as they saw Eleanor, raised a

shout of glee, and began to run towards her. But the moment they perceived

her companion, they stopped dead.

Their little faces darkened, stiffened, their black eyes shone with malice.

Then suddenly the boys swooped on the pebbles of the courtyard, and with

cries of '_Bestia!--bestia!_' they flung them at the priest over their

shoulders, as they all fled helter-skelter, the brothers dragging off the

sisters, the big ones the little ones, out of sight.

'Horrid little imps!' cried Eleanor in indignation. 'What is the matter

with them? I promised them some _soldi_. Did they hit you, Father?'

She paused, arrested by the priest's face.

'They?' he said hoarsely. 'Did you mean the children? Oh! no, they did no

harm?'

What had happened to him since they met last at the villa? No doubt he

had been in conflict with his superiors and his Church. Was he already

suspended?--excommunicate? But he still wore the soutane?

Then panic for herself swept in upon and silenced all else. All was over

with their plans. Father Benecke either was, or might at any moment be, in

communication with Manisty. Alas, alas!--what ill-luck!

They walked together to the road--Eleanor first imagining, then rejecting

one sentence after another. At last she said, a little piteously:

'It is so strange, Father--that you should be here!'

The priest did not answer immediately. He walked with a curiously uncertain

gait. Eleanor noticed that his soutane was dusty and torn, and that he was

unshaven. The peculiar and touching charm that had once arisen from the

contrast between the large-limbed strength which he inherited from a race

of Suabian peasants, and an extraordinary delicacy of feature and skin, a

childish brightness and sweetness in the eyes, had suffered eclipse. He was

dulled and broken. One might have said almost that he had become a mere

ungainly, ill-kept old man, red-eyed for lack of sleep, and disorganised by

some bitter distress.

'You remember--what I told you and Mr. Manisty, at Marinata?' he said at

last, with difficulty.

'Perfectly. You withdrew your letter?'

'I withdrew it. Then I came down here. I have an old friend--a Canon of

Orvieto. He told me once of this place.'

Eleanor looked at him with a sudden return of all her natural kindness and

compassion.

'I am afraid you have gone through a great deal, Father,' she said,

gravely.

The priest stood still. His hand shook upon his stick.

'I must not detain you, Madame,' he said suddenly, with a kind of tremulous

formality. 'You will be wishing to return to your apartment I heard that

two English ladies were expected--but I never thought--'

'How could you?' said Eleanor hurriedly. 'I am not in any hurry. It is very

early still. Will you not tell me more of what has happened to you? You

would'--she turned away her head--'you would have told Mr. Manisty?'

'Ah! Mr. Manisty!' said the priest, with a long, startled sigh. 'I trust he

is well, Madame?'

Eleanor flushed.

'I believe so. He and Miss Manisty are still at Marinata. Father Benecke!'

'Madame?'

Eleanor turned aside, poking at the stones on the road with her parasol.

'You would do me a kindness if for the present you would not mention my

being here to any of your friends in Rome, to--to anybody, in fact. Last

autumn I happened to pass by this place, and thought it very beautiful. It

was a sudden determination on my part and Miss Foster's--you remember the

American lady who was staying with us?--to come here. The villa was getting

very hot, and--and there were other reasons. And now we wish to be quite

alone for a little while--to be in retirement even from our friends. You

will, I am sure, respect our wish?'

She looked up, breathing quickly. All her sudden colour had gone. Her

anxiety and discomposure were very evident. The priest bowed.

'I will be discreet, Madame,' he said, with the natural dignity of his

calling. 'May I ask you to excuse me? I have to walk into Selvapendente to

fetch a letter.'

He took off his flat beaver hat, bowed low and departed, swinging along

at a great pace. Eleanor felt herself repulsed. She hurried back to the

convent. The children were waiting for her at the door, and when they

saw that she was alone they took their _soldi_, though with a touch of

sulkiness.

And the door was opened to her by Lucy.

'Truant!' said the girl reproachfully, throwing her arm round Eleanor. 'As

if you ought to go out without your coffee! But it's all ready for you on

the _loggia_. Where have you been? And why!--what's the matter?'

Eleanor told the news as they mounted to their rooms.

'Ah! _that_ was the priest I saw last night!' cried Lucy. 'I was just going

to tell you of my adventure. Father Benecke! How very, very strange! And

how very tiresome! It's made you look so tired.'

And before she would hear a word more Lucy had put the elder woman into her

chair in the deep shade of the _loggia_, had brought coffee and bread and

fruit from the little table she herself had helped Cecco to arrange, and

had hovered round till Eleanor had taken at least a cup of coffee and a

fraction of roll. Then she brought her own coffee, and sat down on the rug

at Eleanor's feet.

'I know what you're thinking about!' she said, looking up with her sweet,

sudden smile. 'You want to go--right away!'

'Can we trust him?' said Eleanor, miserably. 'Edward doesn't know where he

is,--but he could write of course to Edward at any moment.'

She turned away her face from Lucy. Any mention of Manisty's name dyed it

with painful colour--the shame of the suppliant living on the mercy of the

conqueror.

'He might,' said Lucy, thinking. 'But if you asked him? No; I don't believe

he would. I am sure his soul is beautiful--like his face.'

'His poor face! You don't know how changed he is.'

'Ah! the _carabiniere_ told me last night. He is excommunicated,' said

Lucy, under her breath.

And she repeated her conversation with the handsome Antonio. Eleanor capped

it with the tale of the children.

'It's his book,' said Lucy, frowning. 'What a tyranny!'