Eleanor listened vaguely, hardly replying. But she watched the girl in her

simple white dress, her fine head, her grave and graceful movements; she

noticed the voice, so expressive of an inner self-mastery through all its

gaiety. And suddenly the thought flamed through her--

'If I told her!--if she knew that I had seen a letter from him this

afternoon?--that he is in Italy?--that he is looking for _her_, day and

night! If I just blurted it out--what would she say?--how would she take

it?'

But not a word passed her lips. She began again to try and unravel the

meaning of his letter. Why had he gone in search of them to the Abruzzi of

all places?

Then, suddenly, she remembered.

One day at the villa, some Italian friends--a deputy and his wife--had

described to them a summer spent in a wild nook of the Abruzzi. The young

husband had possessed a fine gift of phrase. The mingled savagery and

innocence of the people; the vast untrodden woods of chestnut and beech;

the slowly advancing civilisation; the new railway line that seemed to

the peasants a living and hostile thing, a kind of greedy fire-monster,

carrying away their potatoes to market and their sons to the army; the

contrasts of the old and new Italy; the joys of summer on the heights,

of an unbroken Italian sunshine steeping a fresh and almost northern

air: he had drawn it all, with the facility of the Italian, the broken,

impressionist strokes of the modern. Why must Italians nowadays always rush

north, to the lakes, or Switzerland or the Tyrol? Here in their own land,

in the Abruzzi, and further south, in the Volscian and Calabrian mountains,

were cool heights waiting to be explored, the savour of a primitive life,

the traces of old cities, old strongholds, old faiths, a peasant world

moreover, unknown to most Italians of the west and north, to be observed,

to be made friends with.

They had all listened in fascination. Lucy especially. The thought of

scenes so rarely seen, so little visited, existing so near to them, in this

old old Italy, seemed to touch the girl's imagination--to mingle as it were

a breath from her own New World with the land of the Cæsars.

'One can ride everywhere?' she had asked, looking up at the traveller.

'Everywhere, mademoiselle.'

'I shall come,' she had said, drawing pencil circles on a bit of paper

before her, with pleased intent eyes, like one planning.

And the Italian, amused by her enthusiasm, had given her a list of places

where accommodation could be got, where hotels of a simple sort were

beginning to develop, whence this new land that was so old could be

explored by the stranger.

And Manisty had stood by, smoking and looking down at the girl's graceful

head, and the charming hand that was writing down the names.

Another pang of the past recalled,--a fresh one added!

For Torre Amiata had been forgotten, while Lucy's momentary whim had

furnished the clue which had sent him on his vain quest through the

mountains.

* * * * *

'I do think '--said Lucy, presently, taking Eleanor's hand,--'you haven't

coughed so much to-day?'

Her tone was full of anxiety, of tenderness.

Eleanor smiled. 'I am very well,' she said, dryly. But Lucy's frown did not

relax. This cough was a new trouble. Eleanor made light of it. But Marie

sometimes spoke of it to Lucy with expressions which terrified one who had

never known illness except in her mother.

Meanwhile Eleanor was thinking--'Something will bring him here. He is

writing to Father Benecke--Father Benecke to him. Some accident will

happen--any day, any hour. Well--let him come!'

Her hands stiffened under her shawl that Lucy had thrown round her. A

fierce consciousness of power thrilled through her weak frame. Lucy was

hers! The pitiful spectacle of these six weeks had done its work. Let him

come.

His letter was not unhappy!--far from it. She felt herself flooded with

bitterness as she remembered the ardour that it breathed; the ardour of

a lover to whom effort and pursuit are joys only second to the joys of

possession.

But some day no doubt he would be unhappy--in earnest; if her will held.

But it would hold.

After all, it was not much she asked. She might live till the winter;

possibly a year. Not long, after all, in Lucy's life or Manisty's. Let them

only wait a little.

Her hand burnt in Lucy's cool clasp. Restlessly, she asked the girl some

further questions about her walk.

'I met the Sisters--the nuns--from Selvapendente, on the hill,' said Lucy.

'Such sweet faces some of them have.'

'I don't agree,' said Eleanor petulantly. 'I saw two of them yesterday.

They smile at you, but they have the narrowest, stoniest eyes. Their pity

would be very difficult to bear.'

A few minutes later Lucy left her for a moment, to give a message to Marie.

'These Christians are hard--_hard_!' thought Eleanor sharply, closing her

tired lids.

Had Father Benecke ever truly weighed her case, her plea at all? Never! It

had been the stereotyped answer of the priest and the preacher. Her secret

sense resented the fact that he had been so little moved, apparently, by

her physical state. It humiliated her that she should have brought so big a

word as death into their debate--to no effect. Her thin cheek flushed with

shame and anger.

The cracked bell which announced their meals tinkled from the sitting-room.

Eleanor dragged herself to her feet, and stood a moment by the parapet

looking into the night.

'I cough less?' she thought. 'Why?--for I get worse every day. That I may

make less noise in dying? Well! one would like to go without ugliness and

fuss. I might as well be dead now, I am so broken--so full of suffering.

How I hide it all from that child! And what is the use of it--of living a

single day or hour more?'

* * * * *

She was angry with Father Benecke; but she took care to see him again.

By means of a little note about a point in the article he was just

completing, she recalled him.

They met without the smallest reference to the scene which had passed

between them. He asked for her literary opinion with the same simplicity,

the same outward deference as before. She was once more the elegant and

languid woman, no writer herself, but born to be the friend and muse of

writers. She made him feel just as clearly as before the clumsiness of a

phrase, the _naïveté_ of a point of view.

And yet in truth all was changed between them. Their talk ranged further,

sank deeper. From the controversy of science with the Vatican, from the

position of the Old Catholics, or the triumph of Ultramontanism in France,

it would drop of a sudden, neither knew how, and light upon some small

matter of conduct or feeling, some 'flower in the crannied wall,' charged

with the profoundest things--things most intimate, most searching,

concerned with the eternal passion and trouble of the human will, the 'body

of this death,' the 'burden' of the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'

Then the priest's gentle insistent look would steal on hers; he would speak

from his heart; he would reveal in a shrinking word or two the secrets of

his own spiritual life, of that long inner discipline, which was now his

only support in rebellion, the plank between him and the abyss.

She felt herself pursued; felt it with a mixture of fear and attraction.

She had asked him to be her director; and then refused his advice. She had

tried to persuade him that she was a sceptic and unbeliever. But he had

not done with her. She divined the ardour of the Christian; perhaps the

acuteness of the ecclesiastic. Often she was not strong enough to talk to

him, and then he read to her--the books that she allowed him to choose.

Through a number of indirect and gradual approaches he laid siege to her,

and again and again did she feel her heart fluttering in his grasp, only to

draw it back in fear, to stand once more on a bitter unspoken defence of

herself that would not yield. Yet he recognised in her the approach of some

crisis of feeling. She seemed herself to suspect it, and to be trying to

ward it off, in a kind of blind anguish. Nothing meanwhile could be more

touching than the love between her and Lucy. The old man looked on and

wondered.

Day after day he hesitated. Then one evening, in Lucy's absence, he found

her so pale, and racked with misery--so powerless either to ask help, or to

help herself, so resolute not to speak again, so clearly tortured by her

own coercing will, that his hesitation gave way.

He walked down the hill, in a trance of prayer. When he emerged from it his

mind was made up.

* * * * *

In the days that followed he seemed to Eleanor often agitated and ill

at ease. She was puzzled, too, by his manner towards Lucy. In truth,

he watched Miss Foster with a timid anxiety, trying to penetrate her

character, to divine how presently she might feel towards him. He was not

afraid of Mrs. Burgoyne, but he was sometimes afraid of this girl with her

clear, candid eyes. Her fresh youth, and many of her American ways and

feelings were hard for him to understand. She showed him friendship in a

hundred pretty ways; and he met her sometimes eagerly, sometimes with a

kind of shame-facedness.

Soon he began to neglect his work of a morning that he might wander out to

meet the postman beyond the bridge. And when the man passed him by with

a short 'Non c' è niente,' the priest would turn homeward, glad almost

that for one day more he was not called upon to face the judgment in Lucy

Foster's face on what he had done.

* * * * *

The middle of July was past. The feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel had

come and gone, bringing processions and music, with a Madonna under a gold

baldacchino, to glorify the little deserted chapel on the height.

Eleanor had watched the crowds and banners, the red-robed Compagni di Gesù,

the white priests, and veiled girls, with a cold averted eye. Lucy looked

back with a pang to Marinata, and to the indulgent pleasure that Eleanor

had once taken in all the many-coloured show of Catholicism. Now she was

always weary, and often fretful. It struck Lucy too that she was more

restless than ever. She seemed to take no notice of the present--to be

always living in the future--expecting, listening, waiting. The gestures

and sudden looks that expressed this attitude of mind were often of the

weirdest effect. Lucy could have thought her haunted by some unseen

presence. Physically she was not, perhaps, substantially worse. But her

state was more appealing, and the girl's mind towards her more pitiful day

by day.

One thing, however, she was determined on. They would not spend August at

Torre Amiata. It would need stubbornness with Eleanor to bring her to the

point of change. But stubbornness there should be.

One morning, a day or two after the festa, Lucy left Eleanor on the

_loggia_, while she herself ran out for a turn before their midday meal.

There had been fierce rain in the morning, and the sky was still thick with

thunder clouds promising more.

She escaped into a washed and cooled world. But the thirsty earth had drunk

the rain at a gulp. The hill which had been running with water was almost

dry, the woods had ceased to patter; on all sides could be felt the fresh

restoring impulse of the storm. Nature seemed to be breathing from a deeper

chest--shaking her free locks in a wilder, keener air--to a long-silent

music from the quickened river below.

Lucy almost ran down the hill, so great was the physical relief of the rain

and the cloudy morning. She needed it. Her spirits, too, had been uneven,

her cheek paler of late.

She wore a blue cotton dress, fitting simply and closely to the young

rounded form. Round her shapely throat and the lace collar that showed

Eleanor's fancy and seemed to herself a little too elaborate for the

morning, she wore a child's coral necklace--a gleam of red between the

abundant black of her hair and the soft blue of her dress. Her hat, a large

Leghorn, with a rose in it, framed the sweet gravity of her face. She was

more beautiful than when she had said good-bye to Uncle Ben on the Boston

platform. But it was a beauty that for his adoring old heart would have

given new meaning to 'that sad word, Joy.'

She turned into the Sassetto and pushed upwards through its tumbled rocks

and trees to the seat commanding the river and the mountains.

As she approached it, she was thinking of Eleanor and the future, and her

eyes were absently bent on the ground.

But a scent familiar and yet strange distracted her. Suddenly, on the path

in front of the seat, she saw a still burning cigarette, and on the seat a

book lying.

She stopped short; then sank upon the seat, her eyes fixed upon the book.

It was a yellow-bound French novel, and on the outside was written in a

hand she knew, a name that startled every pulse in her young body.

_His_ book? And that cigarette? Father Benecke neither smoked nor did he

read French novels.

Beyond the seat the path branched, upwards to the Palazzo, and downwards to

the river. She rose and looked eagerly over its steep edge into the medley

of rock and tree below. She saw nothing, but it seemed to her that in the

distance she heard voices talking--receding.

They had left the seat only just in time to escape her. Mr. Manisty had

forgotten his book! Careless and hasty--how well she knew the trait! But he

would miss it--he would come back.

She stood up and tried to collect her thoughts. If he was here, he was with

Father Benecke. So the priest had betrayed the secret he had promised Mrs.

Burgoyne to keep?

No, no!--that was impossible! It was chance--unkind, unfriendly chance.

And yet?--as she bit her lip in fear or bewilderment, her heart was rising

like the Paglia after the storm--swelling, thundering within her.

'What shall I--what shall I do?' she cried under her breath, pressing her

hands to her eyes.

Then she turned and walked swiftly homewards. Eleanor must not know--must

not see him. The girl was seized with panic terror at the thought of what

might be the effect of any sudden shock upon Mrs. Burgoyne.

Halfway up the hill, she stopped involuntarily, wringing her hands in front

of her. It was the thought of Manisty not half a mile away, of his warm,

living self so close to her that had swept upon her, like a tempest wind on

a young oak.

'Oh! I mustn't--_mustn't_--be glad!'--she cried, gulping down a sob,

hating, despising herself.

Then she hurried on. With every step, she grew more angry with Father

Benecke. At best, he must have been careless, inconsiderate. A man of true

delicacy would have done more than keep his promise, would have actively

protected him.

That he had kept the letter of his promise was almost proved by the fact

that Mr. Manisty had not yet descended upon the convent. For what could it

mean--his lingering in Italy--but a search, a pursuit? Her cheek flamed

guiltily over the certainty thus borne in upon her. But if so, what could

hold back his impetuous will--but ignorance? He could not know they were

there. That was clear.

So there was time--a chance. Perhaps Father Benecke was taken by surprise

too--puzzled to know what to do with him? Should she write to the priest;

or simply keep Eleanor indoors and watch?

At thought of her, the girl lashed herself into an indignation, an anguish

that sustained her. After devotion so boundless, service so measureless--so

lightly, meagrely repaid--were Mrs. Burgoyne's peace and health to be again

in peril at her cousin's hands?

* * * * *

Luckily Eleanor showed that day no wish to move from her sofa. The storm

had shaken her, given her a headache, and she was inclined to shiver in the

cooler air.

After luncheon Lucy coaxed her to stay in one of the inner rooms, where

there was a fire-place; out of sight and sound of the road. Marie made a

fire on the disused hearth of what had once been an infirmary cell. The

logs crackled merrily; and presently the rain streamed down again across

the open window.

Lucy sat sewing and reading through the afternoon in a secret anguish

of listening. Every sound in the corridor, every sound from downstairs,

excited the tumult in the blood. 'What is the matter with you?' Eleanor

would say, reaching out first to pinch, then to kiss the girl's cheek. 'It

is all very well that thunder should set a poor wretch like me on edge--but

you! Anyway it has given you back your colour. You look superbly well this

afternoon.'

And then she would fall to gazing at the girl under her eyebrows with that

little trick of the bitten lip, and that piteous silent look, that Lucy

could hardly bear.

The rain fell fast and furious. They dined by the fire, and the night fell.

'Clearing--at last,' said Eleanor, as they pushed back their little table,

and she stood by the open window, while Cecco was taking away the meal;

'but too late and too wet for me.'

An hour later indeed the storm had rolled away, and a bright and rather

cold starlight shone above the woods.

'Now I understand Aunt Pattie's tales of fires at Sorrento in August,' said

Eleanor, crouching over the hearth. 'This blazing Italy can touch you when

she likes with the chilliest fingers. Poor peasants!--are their hearts

lighter to-night? The rain was fierce, but mercifully there was no hail.

Down below they say the harvest is over. Here they begin next week.

The storm has been rude--but not ruinous. Last year the hail-storms in

September stripped the grape; destroyed half their receipts--and pinched

their whole winter. They will think it all comes of their litanies and

banners the other day. If the vintage goes well too, perhaps they will give

the Madonna a new frock. How simple!--how satisfying!'

She hung over the blaze, with her little pensive smile, cheered physically

by the warmth, more ready to talk, more at ease than she had been for days.

Lucy looked at her with a fast beating heart. How fragile she was, how

lovely still, in the half light!

Suddenly Eleanor turned to her, and held out her arms. Lucy knelt down

beside her, trembling lest any look or word should betray the secret in her

heart. But Eleanor drew the girl to her, resting her cheek tenderly on the

brown head.

'Do you miss your mother very much?' she said softly, turning her lips to

kiss the girl's hair. 'I know you do. I see it in you, often.'

Lucy's eyes filled with tears. She pressed Eleanor's hand without speaking.

They clung together in silence each mind full of thoughts unknown to the

other. But Eleanor's features relaxed; for a little while she rested, body

and mind. And as Lucy lingered in the clasp thrown round her, she seemed

for the first time since the old days at the villa to be the cherished, and

not the cherisher.

* * * * *

Eleanor went early to bed, and then Lucy took a warm shawl and paced up and

down the _loggia_ in a torment of indecision. Presently she was attracted

by the little wooden stair which led down from the _loggia_ to what had

once been the small walled garden of the convent, where the monks of this

austere order had taken their exercise in sickness, or rested in the sun,

when extreme old age debarred them from the field labour of their comrades.

The garden was now a desolation, save for a tangle of oleanders and myrtle

in its midst. But the high walls were still intact, and an old wooden door

on the side nearest to the forest. Beneath the garden was a triangular

piece of open grass land sloping down towards the entrance of the Sassetto

and bounded on one side by the road.

Lucy wandered up and down, in a wild trance of feeling. Half a mile away

was he sitting with Father Benecke?--winning perhaps their poor secret from

the priest's incautious lips'? With what eagle-quickness could he pounce on

a sign, an indication! And then the flash of those triumphant eyes, and the

onslaught of his will on theirs!

Hark! She caught her breath.

Voices! Two men were descending the road. She hurried to hide her white

dress, close, under the wall--she strained every sense.

The sputter of a match--the trail of its scent in the heavy air--an

exclamation.

'Father!--wait a moment! Let me light up. These matches are damp. Besides I

want to have another look at this old place--'

The steps diverged from the road; approached the lower wall of the garden.

She pressed herself against its inner surface, trembling in every limb.

Only the old door between her and them! She dared not move--but it was not

only fear of discovery that held her. It was a mad uncontrollable joy, that

like a wind on warm embers, kindled all her being into flame.

'One more crime--that!--of your Parliamentary Italy! What harm had the poor

things done that they should be turned out? You heard what that carabiniere

said?--that they farmed half the plateau. And now look at that! I feel as I

do when I see a blackbird's nest on the ground, that some beastly boy has

been robbing and destroying. I want to get at the boy.'

'The boy would plead perhaps that the blackbirds were too many--and the

fruit too scant. Is it wise, my dear sir, to stand there in the damp?'

The voice was pitched low. Lucy detected the uneasiness of the speaker.

'One moment. You remember, I was here before in November. This summer night

is a new impression. What a pure and exquisite air!'--Lucy could hear the

long inhalation that followed the words. 'I recollect a vague notion of

coming to read here. The _massaja_ told us they took in people for the

summer. Ah! There are some lights, I see, in those upper windows.'

'There are rooms in several parts of the building. Mine were in that

further wing. They were hardly watertight,' said the priest hastily, and in

the same subdued voice.

'It is a place that one might easily rest in--or hide in,' said Manisty

with a new accent on the last words. 'To-morrow morning I will ask the

woman to let me walk through it again.--And to-morrow midday, I must be

off.'

'So soon? My old Francesca will owe you a grudge. She is almost reconciled

to me because you eat--because you praised her omelet.'

'Ah! Francesca is an artist. But--as I told you--I am at present a wanderer

and a pilgrim. We have had our talk--you and I--grasped hands, cheered each

other, "passed the time of day," _undweiter noch--noch weiter--mein treuer

Wanderstab_!'

The words fell from the deep voice with a rich significant note. Lucy heard

the sigh, the impatient, despondent sigh, that followed.

They moved away. The whiffs of tobacco still came back to her on the light

westerly wind; the sound of their voices still reached her covetous ear.

Suddenly all was silent.

She spread her hands on the door in a wild groping gesture.

'Gone! gone!' she said under her breath. Then her hands dropped, and she

stood motionless, with bent head, till the moment was over, and her blood

tamed.

CHAPTER XXI

'Maso! look here!' said Lucy, addressing a small boy, who with his brother

was driving some goats along the road.

She took from a basket on her arm, first some _pasticceria_, then a square

of chocolate, lastly a handful of _soldi_.

'You know the _casetta_ by the river where Mamma Brigitta lives?'

'Yes.' The boy looked at her with his sharp stealthy eyes.

'Take down this letter to Mamma Brigitta. If you wait a little, she'll give

you another letter in exchange, and if you bring it up to me, you shall

have all those!'

And she spread out her bribes.

The boys' faces were sulky. The house by the river was unpopular, owing

to its tenant. But the temptation was of a devilish force. They took the

letter and scampered down the hill driving their goats before them.

Lucy also walked down some three or four of the innumerable zig-zags of the

road. Presently she found a rocky knoll to the left of it. A gap in the

trees opened a vision of the Amiata range, radiantly blue under a superb

sky, a few shreds of moving mist still wrapped about its topmost peaks.

She took her seat upon a moss-covered stone facing the road which mounted

towards her. But some bushes of tall heath and straggling arbutus made a

light screen in front of her. She saw, but she could hardly be seen, till

the passer-by coming from the river was close upon her.

She sat there with her hands lightly crossed upon her knees, holding

herself a little stiffly--waiting.

The phrases of her letter ran in her head. It had been short and

simple.--'Dear Father Benecke,--I have reason to know that Mr. Manisty is

here--is indeed staying with you. Mrs. Burgoyne is not aware of it and I am

anxious that she should not be told. She wishes--as I think she made clear

to you--to be quite alone here, and if she desired to see her cousins she

would of course have written to them herself. She is too ill to be startled

or troubled in any way. Will you do us a great kindness? Will you persuade

Mr. Manisty to go quietly away without letting Mrs. Burgoyne know that he

has been here? Please ask him to tell Miss Manisty that we shall not be

here much longer, that we have a good doctor, and that as Torre Amiata is

on the hills the heat is not often oppressive.'

... The minutes passed away. Presently her thoughts began to escape the

control she had put upon them; and she felt herself yielding to a sense of

excitement. She resolutely took a book of Italian stories from the bottom

of her basket, and began to read.

At last! the patter of the goats and the shouts of the boys.

They rushed upon her with the letter. She handed over their reward and

broke the seal.

'Hochgeerhrtes Fräulein,--

'It is true that Mr. Manisty is here. I too am most anxious that Mrs.

Burgoyne should not be startled or disturbed. But I distrust my own

diplomacy; nor have I yet mentioned your presence here to my guest. I am

not at liberty to do so, having given my promise to Mrs. Burgoyne. Will

you not see and speak to Mr. Manisty yourself? He talks of going up this

morning to see the old convent. I cannot prevent him, without betraying

what I have no right to betray. At present he is smoking in my garden. But

his carriage is ordered from Selvapendente two hours hence. If he does go

up the hill, it would surely be easy for you to intercept him. If not, you

may he sure that he has left for Orvieto.'

Lucy read the letter with a flush and a frown. It struck her that it was

not quite simple; that the priest knew more, and was more concerned in the

new turn of events than he avowed.

She was well aware that he and Eleanor had had much conversation; that

Eleanor was still possessed by the same morbid forces of grief and anger

which, at the villa, had broken down all her natural reticence and

self-control. Was it possible--?

Her cheek flamed. She felt none of that spell in the priestly office which

affected Eleanor. The mere bare notion of being 'managed' by this kind old

priest was enough to rouse all her young spirit and defiance.

But the danger was imminent. She saw what she must do, and prepared herself

to do it--simply, without any further struggle.

The little goatherds left her, munching their cakes and looking back at her

from time to time in a childish curiosity. The pretty blue lady had seated

herself again as they had found her--a few paces from the roadside, under

the thick shadow of an oak.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Manisty was rejoined by Father Benecke--who had left him for

a few minutes to write his letter--beside the Paglia, which was rushing

down in a brown flood, after the rain of the day before. Around and above

them, on either side of the river, and far up the flanks of the mountains

opposite, stretched the great oak woods, which are still to-day the lineal

progeny of that vast Ciminian forest where lurked the earliest enemies of

Rome.

'But for the sun, it might be Wales!' said Manisty, looking round him, as

he took out another cigarette.

Father Benecke made no reply. He sat on a rock by the water's side, in what

seemed to be a reverie. His fine white head was uncovered. His attitude was

gentle, dignified, abstracted.

'It is a marvellous country this!' Manisty resumed. 'I thought I knew it

pretty well. But the last five weeks have given one's mind a new hold upon

it. The forests have been wasted--but by George!--what forests there are

still!--and what a superb mountain region, half of which is only known to

a few peasants and shepherds. What rivers--what fertility--what a climate!

And the industry of the people. Catch a few English farmers and set them to

do what the Italian peasant does, year in and year out, without a murmur!

Look at all the coast south of Naples. There is not a yard of it, scarcely,

that hasn't been _made_ by human hands. Look at the hill-towns; and think

of the human toil that has gone to the making and maintaining of them since

the world began.'

And swaying backwards and forwards he fell into the golden lines:

Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem,

Tot congesta manu præruptis oppida saxis,

Fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros.

'_Congesta manu! Ecco!_--there they are'--and he pointed down the river to

the three or four distant towns, each on its mountain spur, that held the

valley between them and Orvieto--pale jewels on the purple robe of rock and

wood.

'So Virgil saw them. So the latest sons of time shall see them--the homes

of a race that we chatter about without understanding--the most laborious

race in the wide world.'

And again he rolled out under his breath, for the sheer joy of the verse:

Salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus,

Magna virûm.

The priest looked at him with a smile; preoccupied yet shrewd.

'I follow you with some astonishment. Surely--I remember other sentiments

on your part?'

Manisty coloured a little, and shook his black head, protesting.

'I never said uncivil things, that I remember, about Italy or the Italians

as such. My quarrel was with the men that run them, the governments that

exploit them. My point was that Piedmont and the North had been too greedy,

had laid hands too rapidly on the South and had risked this damnable

quarrel with the Church, without knowing what they were running their

heads into. And in consequence they found themselves--in spite of rivers

of corrupt expenditure--without men, or money, or credit to work their big

new machine with; while the Church was always there, stronger than ever for

the grievance they had presented her with, and turned into an enemy with

whom it was no longer possible to parley. Well!--that struck me as a good

object lesson. I wanted to say to the secularising folk everywhere--England

included--just come here, and look what your policy comes to, when it's

carried out to the bitter end, and not in the gingerly, tinkering fashion

you affect at home! Just understand what it means to separate Church from

State, to dig a gulf between the religious and the civil life.--Here's a

country where nobody can be at once a patriot and a good Christian--where

the Catholics don't vote for Parliament, and the State schools teach

no religion--where the nation is divided into two vast camps, hating

and thrusting at each other with every weapon they can tear from life.

Examine it! That's what the thing looks like when it's full grown. Is it

profitable--does it make for good times? In your own small degree, are you

going to drive England that way too?--You'll admit, Father--you always did

admit--that it was a good theme.'

The priest smiled--a little sadly.

'Excellent. Only--you seemed to me--a little irresponsible.'

Manisty nodded, and laughed.

'An outsider, with no stakes on? Well--that's true. But being a Romantic

and an artist I sided with the Church. The new machine, and the men that

were running it, seemed to me an ugly jerry-built affair, compared with the

Papacy and all that it stood for. But then--'

--He leant back in his chair, one hand snatching and tearing at the bushes

round him, in his absent, destructive way.--

'Well then--as usual--facts began to play the mischief with one's ideas.

In the first place, as one lives on in Italy you discover the antiquity of

this quarrel; that it is only the Guelf and Ghibelline quarrel over again,

under new names. And in the next--presently one begins to divine an Italy

behind the Italy we know, or history knows!--Voices come to one, as Goethe

would say, from the caves where dwell "Die Mütter"--the creative generative

forces of the country.'--

He turned his flashing look on Benecke, pleased now as always with the mere

task of speech.

'Anyway, as I have been going up and down their country, especially during

the last six weeks; prating about their poverty, and their taxes, their

corruption, the incompetence of their leaders, the folly of their quarrel

with the Church; I have been finding myself caught in the grip of things

older and deeper--incredibly, primevally old!--that still dominate

everything, shape everything here. There are forces in Italy, forces of

land and soil and race--only now fully let loose--that will remake Church

no less than State, as the generations go by. Sometimes I have felt as

though this country were the youngest in Europe; with a future as fresh and

teeming as the future of America. And yet one thinks of it at other times

as one vast graveyard; so thick it is with the ashes and the bones of men!

The Pope--and Crispi!--waves, both of them, on a sea of life that gave them

birth, "with equal mind"; and that with equal mind will sweep them both to

its own goal--not theirs.'

He smiled at his own eloquence, and returned to his cigarette.

The priest had listened to him all through with the same subtle embarrassed

look.

'This must have some cause,' he said slowly, when Manisty ceased to speak.

'Surely?--this change? I recall language so different--forecasts so

gloomy.'

'Gracious!--I can give you books-full of them,' said Manisty, reddening,

'if you care to read them. I came out with a _parti-pris_--I don't deny it.

Catholicism had a great glamour for me; it has still, so long as you don't

ask me to put my own neck under the yoke! But Rome itself is disenchanting.

And outside Rome!--During the last six weeks I have been talking to every

priest I could come across in these remote country districts where I

have been wandering. _Per Dio!_--Marcello used to talk--I didn't believe

him. But upon my word, the young fellows whom the seminaries are now

sending out in shoals represent a fact to give one pause!--Little black

devils!--_Scusi!_ Father,--the word escaped me. Broadly speaking, they

are a political militia,--little else. Their hatred of Italy is a venom

in their bones, and they themselves are mad for a spiritual tyranny which

no modern State could tolerate for a week. When one thinks of the older

men--of Rosmini, of Gioberti, of the priests who died on the Milan

barricades in '48!'

His companion made a slow movement of assent.

Manisty smoked on, till presently he launched the _mot_ for which he had

been feeling. 'The truth of the matter seems to be that Italy is Catholic,

because she hasn't faith enough to make a heresy; and anti-clerical,

because it is her destiny to be a nation!'

The priest smiled, but with a certain languor, turning his head once or

twice as though to listen for sounds behind him, and taking out his watch.

His eyes meanwhile--and their observation of Manisty--were not languid;

seldom had the mild and spiritual face been so personal, so keen.

'Well, it is a great game,' said Manisty again--'and we shan't see the end.

Tell me--how have they treated _you_--the priests in these parts?'

Benecke started and shrank.

'I have no complaint to make,' he said mildly. 'They seem to me good men.'

Manisty smoked in silence.

Then he said, as though summing up his own thoughts,--

'No,--there are plenty of dangers ahead. This war has shaken the

_Sabaudisti_--for the moment. Socialism is serious.--Sicily is

serious.--The economic difficulties are serious.--The House of Savoy will

have a rough task, perhaps, to ride the seas that may come.--But _Italy_

is safe. You can no more undo what has been done than you can replace the

child in the womb. The birth is over. The organism is still weak, but it

lives. And the forces behind it are indefinitely, mysteriously stronger

than the Vatican thinks.'

'A great recantation,' said the priest quickly.

Manisty winced, but for a while said nothing. All at once he jerked away

his cigarette.

'Do you suspect some other reason for it, than the force of evidence?'--he

said, in another manner.

The priest, smiling, looked him full in the face without replying.

'You may,' said Manisty, coolly. 'I shan't play the hypocrite. Father, I

told you that I had been wandering about Italy on a quest that was not

health, nor piety, nor archæology. How much did you guess?'

'Naturally, something--_lieber Herr_.'

'Do you know that I should have been at Torre Amiata weeks ago but for

you?'

'For me! You talk in riddles.'

'Very simple. Your letters might have contained a piece of news--and did

not. Yet if it had been there to give, you would have given it. So I

crossed Torre Amiata off my list. No need to go _there_! I said to myself.'

The priest was silent.

Manisty looked up. His eyes sparkled; his lips trembled as though they

could hardly bring themselves to launch the words behind them.

'Father--you remember a girl--at the Villa?'

The priest made a sign of assent.

'Well--I have been through Italy--with that girl's voice in my ears--and,

as it were, her eyes rather than my own. I have been searching for her

for weeks. She has hidden herself from me. But I shall find her!--now or

later--here or elsewhere.'

'And then?'

'Well, then,--I shall know some "eventful living"!'

He drew a long breath.

'And you hope for success?'

'Hope?' said Manisty, passionately. 'I live on something more nourishing

than that!'

The priest lifted his eyebrows.

'You are so certain?'

'I must be certain'--said Manisty, in a low voice,--'or in torment! I

prefer the certainty.'

His face darkened. In its frowning disorganisation his companion saw for

the first time a man hitherto unknown to him, a man who spoke with the

dignity, the concentration, the simplicity of true passion.

Dignity! The priest recalled the voice, the looks of Eleanor Burgoyne.

Not a word for her--not a thought! His old heart began to shrink from his

visitor, from his own scheme.

'Then how do you explain the young lady's disappearance?' he asked, after a

pause.

Manisty laughed. But the note was bitter.

'Father!--I shall make her explain it herself.'

'She is not alone?'

'No--my cousin Mrs. Burgoyne is with her.'

Benecke observed him, appreciated the stiffening of the massive shoulders.

'I heard from some friends in Rome,' said the priest, after a

moment--'distressing accounts of Mrs. Burgoyne's health.'

Manisty's look was vague and irresponsive.

'She was always delicate,' he said abruptly,--not kindly.

'What makes you look for them in Italy?'

'Various causes. They would think themselves better hidden from their

English friends, in Italy than elsewhere, at this time of year. Beside, I

remember one or two indications--'

There was a short silence. Then Manisty sprang up.

'How long, did you say, before the trap came? An hour and a half?'

'Hardly,' said the priest, unwillingly, as he drew out his watch.--'And you

must give yourself three hours to Orvieto--'

'Time enough. I'll go and have a look at those frescoes again--and a chat

with the woman. Don't interrupt yourself. I shall be back in half an hour.'

'Unfortunately I must write a letter,' said the priest.

And he stood at the door of his little bandbox of a house, watching the

departure of his guest.

Manisty breasted the hill, humming as he walked. The irregular vigorous

form, the nobility and animation of his carriage drew the gaze of the

priest after him.

'At what point'--he said to himself,--'will he find her?'

CHAPTER XXII

Eleanor did not rise now, as a rule, till half way through the morning.

Lucy had left her in bed.

It was barely nine o'clock. Every eastern or southern window was already

fast closed and shuttered, but her door stood open to the _loggia_ into

which no sun penetrated till the afternoon.

A fresh breeze, which seemed the legacy of the storm, blew through the

doorway. Framed in the yellow arches of the _loggia_ she saw two cypresses

glowing black upon the azure blaze of the sky. And in front of them,

springing from a pot on the _loggia_, the straggly stem and rosy bunches

of an oleander. From a distance the songs of harvesters at their work; and

close by, the green nose of a lizard peeping round the edge of the door.

Eleanor seemed to herself to have just awakened from sleep; yet not from

unconsciousness. She had a confused memory of things which had passed in

sleep--of emotions and experiences. Her heart was beating fast, and as

she sat up, she caught her own reflection in the cracked glass on the

dressing-table. Startled, she put up her hand to her flushed cheek. It was

wet.

'Crying!' she said, in wonder--'what have I been dreaming about? And why do

I feel like this? What is the matter with me?'

After a minute or two, she rang a handbell beside her, and her maid

appeared.

'Marie, I am so well--so strong! It is extraordinary! Bring everything. I

should like to get up.'

The maid, in fear of Lucy, remonstrated. But her mistress prevailed.

'Do my hair as usual to-day,' she said, as soon as that stage of her

toilette was reached, and she was sitting in her white wrapper before the

cracked glass.

Marie stared.

'It will tire you, madame.'

'No, it won't. _Mais faites vite!_'

Ever since their arrival at Torre Amiata Eleanor had abandoned the various

elaborate _coiffures_ in which she had been wont to appear at the villa.

She would allow nothing but the simplest and rapidest methods; and Marie

had been secretly alarmed lest her hand should lose her cunning.

So that to-day she coiled, crimped, curled with a will. When she had

finished, Eleanor surveyed herself and laughed.

'_Ah! mais vraiment, Marie, tu es merveilleuse!_ What is certain is that

neither that glass nor Torre Amiata is worthy of it. _N'importe._ One must

keep up standards.'

'Certainly, madame, you look better to-day.'

'I slept. Why did I sleep? I can't imagine. After all, Torre Amiata is not

such a bad place--is it Marie?'

And with a laugh, she lightly touched her maid's cheek.

Marie looked a little sullen.

'It seems that madame would like to live and die here.'

She had no sooner said the words than she could have bitten her tongue out.

She was genuinely attached to her mistress; and she knew well that Eleanor

was no _malade imaginaire_.

Eleanor's face changed a little.

'Oh! you foolish girl--we shall soon be gone. No, not that old frock. Look,

please, at that head you've made me--and consider! _Noblesse oblige._'

So presently, she stood before her table in a cream walking

dress--perfect--but of the utmost simplicity; with her soft black hat tied

round the ripples and clouds of her fair hair.

'How it hangs on me!' she said, gathering up the front of her dress in her

delicate hand.

Marie made a little face of pity and concern.

'_Mais oui, Madame. Il faudrait le cacher un peu._'

'Padding? _Tiens! j'en ai déjà._ But if Mathilde were to put any more,

there would be nothing else. One day, Marie, you see, there will be only my

clothes left to walk about--by their little selves!'

She smiled. The maid said nothing. She was on her knees buttoning her

mistress's shoes.

'Now then--_fini!_ Take all those books on to the _loggia_ and arrange my

chair. I shall be there directly.'

The maid departed. Eleanor sat down to rest from the fatigue of dressing.

'How weak I am!--weaker than last month. And next month it will be a little

more--and a little more--then pain perhaps--horrid pain--and one day it

will be impossible to get up--and all one's poor body will fail one like a

broken vessel. And then--relief perhaps--if dying is as easy as it looks.

No more pangs or regrets--and at the end, either a sudden puff that blows

out the light--or a quiet drowning in deep waters--without pain.... And

to-day how little I fear it!'

A _prie-dieu_ chair, old and battered like everything else in the convent,

was beside her, and above it her child's portrait. She dropped upon her

knees, as she always did for a minute or two morning and evening, mostly

out of childish habit.

But her thoughts fell into no articulate words. Her physical weakness

rested against the chair; but the weakness of the soul seemed also to rest

on some invisible support.

'What is the matter with me to-day?'--she asked herself again, in

bewilderment. 'Is it an omen--a sign? All bonds seem loosened--the air

lighter. What made me so miserable yesterday? I wanted him to come--and yet

dreaded--dreaded it so! And now to-day I don't care--I don't care!'

She slipped into a sitting position and looked at the picture. A tiny

garland of heath and myrtle was hung round it. The little fellow seemed to

be tottering towards her, the eyes a little frightened, yet trusting, the

gait unsteady.

'Childie!'--she said in a whisper, smiling at him--'Childie!'

Then with a long sigh, she rose, and feebly made her way to the _loggia_.

Her maid was waiting for her. But Eleanor refused her sofa. She would

sit, looking out through the arches of the _loggia_, to the road, and the

mountains.

'Miss Foster is a long time,' she said to Marie. 'It is too hot for her to

be out. And how odd! There is the Contessa's carriage--and the Contessa

herself--at this time of day. Run, Marie! Tell her I shall be delighted to

see her. And bring another comfortable chair--there's a dear.'

The Contessa mounted the stone stairs with the heavy masculine step that

was characteristic of her.

'_Vous permettez, madame!_'--she said, standing in the doorway--'at this

unseasonable hour.'

Eleanor made her welcome. The portly Contessa seated herself with an

involuntary gesture of fatigue.

'What have you been doing?' said Eleanor. 'If you have been helping the

harvesters, _je proteste_!'

She laid her hand laughingly on the Contessa's knee. It seemed to her that

the Contessa knew far more of the doings and affairs of her _contadini_

than did the rather magnificent _fattore_ of the estate. She was in and out

among them perpetually. She quarrelled with them and hectored them; she had

as good a command of the local dialect as they had; and an eye that pounced

on cheating like an osprey on a fish. Nevertheless, as she threw in yet

another evident trifle--that she cared more for them and their interests

than for anything else in the world, now that her son was gone--they

endured her rule, and were not actively ungrateful for her benefits. And,

in her own view at any rate, there is no more that any rich person can ask

of any poor one till another age of the world shall dawn.

She received Eleanor's remark with an embarrassed air.

'I have been doctoring an ox,' she said, bluntly, as though apologising for

herself. 'It was taken ill last night, and they sent for me.'

'But you are too, too wonderful!' cried Eleanor in amusement. 'Is it all

grist that comes to your mill--sick oxen--or humans like me?'

The Contessa smiled, but she turned away her head.

'It was Emilio's craze,' she said abruptly. 'He knew every animal on the

place. In his regiment they called him the "vet.," because he was always

patching up the sick and broken mules. One of his last messages to me

was about an old horse. He taught me a few things--and sometimes I am of

use--till the farrier comes.'

There was a little silence, which the Contessa broke abruptly.

'I came, however, madame, to tell you something about myself. Teresa has

made up her mind to leave me.'

'Your daughter?' cried Eleanor amazed. '_Fiancée?_'

The Contessa shook her head.

'She is about to join the nuns of Santa Francesca. Her novitiate begins in

October. Now she goes to stay with them for a few weeks.'

Eleanor was thunderstruck.

'She leaves you alone?'

The Contessa mutely assented.

'And you approve?' said Eleanor hotly.

'She has a vocation'--said the Contessa with a sigh.

'She has a mother!' cried Eleanor.

'Ah! madame--you are a Protestant. These things are in our blood. When we

are devout, like Teresa, we regard the convent as the gate of heaven. When

we are Laodiceans--like me--we groan, and we submit.'

'You will be absolutely alone,' said Eleanor, in a low voice of emotion,

'in this solitary place.'

The Contessa fidgetted. She was of the sort that takes pity hardly.

'There is much to do,'--she said, shortly.

But then her fortitude a little broke down. 'If I were ten years older, it

would be all right,' she said, in a voice that betrayed the mind's fatigue

with its own debate. 'It's the time it all lasts; when you are as strong as

I am.'

Eleanor took her hand and kissed it.

'Do you never take quite another line?' she said, with sparkling eyes. 'Do

you never say--"This is my will, and I mean to have it! I have as much

right to my way as other people?" Have you never tried it with Teresa?'

The Contessa opened her eyes.

'But I am not a tyrant,' she said, and there was just a touch of scorn in

her reply.

Eleanor trembled.

'We have so few years to live and be happy in,' she said in a lower voice,

a voice of self-defence.

'That is not how it appears to me,' said the Contessa slowly. 'But then I

believe in a future life.'

'And you think it wrong ever to press--to _insist_ upon--the personal, the

selfish point of view?'

The Contessa smiled.

'Not so much wrong, as futile. The world is not made so--_chère madame_.'

Eleanor sank back in her chair. The Contessa observed her emaciation, her

pallor--and the pretty dress.

She remembered her friend's letter, and the 'Signor Manisty' who should

have married this sad, charming woman, and had not done so. It was easy

to see that not only disease but grief was preying on Mrs. Burgoyne. The

Contessa was old enough to be her mother. A daughter whom she had lost in

infancy would have been Eleanor's age, if she had lived.

'Madame, let me give you a piece of advice'--she said suddenly, taking

Eleanor's hands in both her own--'leave this place. It does not suit you.

These rooms are too rough for you--or let me carry you off to the Palazzo,

where I could look after you.'

Eleanor flushed.

'This place is very good for me,' she said with a wild fluttering breath.

'To-day I feel so much better--so much lighter!'

The Contessa felt a pang. She had heard other invalids say such things

before. The words rang like a dirge upon her ear. They talked a little

longer. Then the Contessa rose, and Eleanor rose, too, in spite of her

guest's motion to restrain her.

As they stood together the elder woman in her strength suddenly felt

herself irresistibly drawn towards the touching weakness of the other.

Instead of merely pressing hands, she quickly threw her strong arms round

Mrs. Burgoyne, gathered her for an instant to her broad breast, and kissed

her.

Eleanor leant against her, sighing:

'A vocation wouldn't drag _me_ away,' she said gently.

And so they parted.

* * * * *

Eleanor hung over the _loggia_ and watched the Contessa's departure. As the

small horses trotted away, with a jingling of bells and a fluttering of the

furry tails that hung from their ears, the _padre parroco_ passed. He took

off his hat to the Contessa, then seeing Mrs. Burgoyne on the _loggia_, he

gave her, too, a shy but smiling salutation.

His light figure, his young and dreamy air, suited well with the beautiful

landscape through which it passed. Shepherd? or poet? Eleanor thought of

David among the flocks.

'He only wants the crook--the Scriptural crook. It would go quite well with

the soutane.'

Then she became aware of another figure approaching on her right from the

piece of open land that lay below the garden.

It was Father Benecke, and he emerged on the road just in front of the

_padre parroco_.

The old priest took off his hat. Eleanor saw the sensitive look, the

slow embarrassed gesture. The _padre parroco_ passed without looking

to the right or left. All the charming pliancy of the young figure had

disappeared. It was drawn up to a steel rigidity.

Eleanor smiled and sighed.

'David among the Philistines!--_Ce pauvre Goliath_! Ah! he is coming here?'

She withdrew to her sofa, and waited.

Marie, after instructions, and with that austerity of demeanour which

she, too, never failed to display towards Father Benecke, introduced the

visitor.

'Entrez, mon père, entrez,' said Eleanor, holding out a friendly hand. 'Are

you, too, braving the sun? Did you pass Miss Foster? I wish she would come

in--it is getting too hot for her to be out.'

'Madame, I have not been on the road. I came around through the Sassetto.

There I found no one.'

'Pray sit down, Father. That chair has all its legs. It comes from

Orvieto.'

But he did not accept her invitation--at least not at once. He remained

hesitating--looking down upon her. And she, struck by his silence, struck

by his expression, felt a sudden seizing of the breath. Her hand slid to

her heart, with its fatal, accustomed gesture. She looked at him wildly,

imploringly.

But the pause came to an end. He sat down beside her.

'Madame, you have taken so kind an interest in my unhappy affairs that you

will perhaps allow me to tell you of the letter that has reached me this

morning. One of the heads of the Old Catholic community invites me to go

and consult with them before deciding on the course of my future life.

There are many difficulties. I am not altogether in sympathy with them.

A married priesthood such as they have now adopted, is in my eyes a

priesthood shorn of its strength. But the invitation is so kind, so

brotherly, I must needs accept it.'

He bent forward, looking not at her, but at the brick floor of the

_loggia_. Eleanor offered a few words of sympathy; but felt there was more

to come.

'I have also heard from my sister. She refuses to keep my house any

longer. Her resentment at what I have done is very bitter--apparently

insurmountable. She wishes to retire to a country place in Bavaria where we

have some relations. She has a small _rente_, and will not be in any need.'

'And you?' said Eleanor quickly.

'I must find work, madame. My book will bring me in a little, they say.

That will give me time--and some liberty of decision. Otherwise of course I

am destitute. I have lost everything. But my education will always bring me

enough for bread. And I ask no more.'

Her compassion was in her eyes.

'You too--old and alone--like the Contessa!' she said under her breath.

He did not hear. He was pursuing his own train of thought, and presently

he raised himself. Never had the apostolic dignity of his white head, his

broad brow been more commanding. But what Eleanor saw, what perplexed her,

was the subtle tremor of the lip, the doubt in the eyes.

'So you see, madame, our pleasant hours are almost over. In a few days I

must be gone. I will not attempt to express what I owe to your most kind,

most indulgent sympathy. It seems to me that in the "dark wood" of my life

it was your conversation--when my heart was so sorely cast down--which

revived my intelligence--and so held me up, till--till I could see my way,

and choose my path again. It has given me a great many new ideas--this

companionship you have permitted me. I humbly confess that I shall always

henceforward think differently of women, and of the relations that men and

women may hold to one another. But then, madame--'

He paused. Eleanor could see his hand trembling on his knee.

She raised herself on her elbow.

'Father Benecke! you have something to say to me!'

He hurried on.

'The other day you allowed us to change the _rôles_. You had been my

support. You threw yourself on mine. Ah! Madame, have I been of any

assistance to you--then, and in the interviews you have since permitted me?

Have I strengthened your heart at all as you strengthened mine?'

His ardent, spiritual look compelled--and reassured her.

She sank back. A tear glittered on her brown lashes. She raised a hand to

dash it away.

'I don't know, Father--I don't know. But to-day--for some mysterious

reason--I seem almost to be happy again. I woke up with the feeling of one

who had been buried under mountains of rocks and found them rolled away;

of one who had been passing through a delirium which was gone. I seem to

care for nothing--to grieve for nothing. Sometimes you know that happens to

people who are very ill. A numbness comes upon them.--But I am not numb. I

feel everything. Perhaps, Father'--and she turned to him with her old sweet

instinct--of one who loved to be loved--'perhaps you have been praying for

me?'

She smiled at him half shyly. But he did not see it. His head bent lower

and lower.

'Thank God!' he said, with the humblest emphasis. 'Then,

madame--perhaps--you will find the force--to forgive me!'

The words were low--the voice steady.

Eleanor sprang up.

'Father Benecke!--what have you been doing? Is--is Mr. Manisty here?'

She clung to the _loggia_ parapet for support. The priest looked at her

pallor with alarm, with remorse, and spoke at once.

'He came to me last night.'

Their eyes met, as though in battle--expressed a hundred questions--a

hundred answers. Then she broke the silence.

'Where is he?' she said imperiously.' Ah!--I see--I see!'

She sat down, fronting him, and panting a little.

'Miss Foster is not with me. Mr. Manisty is not with you. The inference

is easy.--And you planned it! You took--you _dared_ to take--as much as

this--into your own hands!'

He made no reply. He bent like a reed in the storm.

'There is no boldness like a saint's'--she said bitterly,--'no

hardness--like an angel's! What I would not have ventured to do with my

closest friend, my nearest and dearest--you--a stranger--have done--with a

light heart. Oh! it is monstrous!--monstrous!'

She moved her neck from side to side as though she was

suffocating--throwing back the light ruffle that encircled it.

'A stranger?'--he said slowly. His intense yet gentle gaze confronted hers.

'You refer, I suppose, to that most sacred, most intimate confidence I

made to you?--which no man of honour or of heart could have possibly

betrayed,'--she said passionately. 'Ah! you did well to warn me that it

was no true confession--under no true seal! You should have warned me

further--more effectually.'

Her paleness was all gone. Her cheeks flamed. The priest felt that she was

beside herself, and, traversed as his own mind was with the most poignant

doubts and misgivings, he must needs wrestle with her, defend himself.

'Madame!--you do me some wrong,' he said hurriedly. 'At least in words

I have told nothing--betrayed nothing. When I left him an hour ago Mr.

Manisty had no conception that you were here. After my first letter to him,

he tells me that he relinquished the idea of coming to Torre Amiata, since

if you had been staying here, I must have mentioned it.'

Eleanor paused. 'Subterfuge!' she cried, under her breath. Then,

aloud--'You asked him to come.'

'That, madame, is my crime,' he admitted, with a mild and painful humility.

'Your anger hits me hard. But--do you remember?--you placed three lives in

my hands. I found you helpless; you asked for help. I saw you day by day,

more troubled, yet, as it seemed to me, more full of instincts towards

generosity, towards peace. I felt--oh! madame, I felt with all my heart,

that there lay just one step between you and a happiness that would

compensate you a thousand times for all you had gone through. You say that

I prayed for you. I did--often--and earnestly. And it seemed to me that--in

our later conversations--I saw such signs of grace in you--such exquisite

dispositions of the heart--that were the chance of action once more given

to you--you would find the strength to seize the blessing that God offered

you. And one evening in particular, I found you in an anguish that seemed

to be destroying you. And you had opened your heart to me; you had asked my

help as a Christian priest. And so, madame, as you say--I dared. I said, in

writing to Mr. Manisty, who had told me he was coming northward--"if Torre

Amiata is not far out of your road--look in upon me." Neither your name nor

Miss Foster's passed my lips. But since--I confess--I have lived in much

disturbance of mind!'

Eleanor laughed.

'Are all priests as good casuists as you, Father?'

His eyes wavered a little as though her words stung. But he did not reply.

There was a pause. Eleanor turned towards the parapet and looked outward

towards the road and the forest. Her face and eyes were full of an

incredible animation; her lips were lightly parted to let the quick breath

pass.

Then of a sudden she withdrew. Her eyes moved back to Father Benecke; she

bent forward and held out both her hands.

'Father--I forgive you! Let us make peace.'

He took the small fingers into his large palms with a gratitude that was at

once awkward and beautiful.

'I don't know yet'--he said, in a deep perplexity--'whether I absolve

myself.'

'You will soon know,' she said almost with gaiety. 'Oh! it is quite

possible'--she threw up one hand in a wild childish gesture--'it is quite

possible that to-morrow I may be at your feet, asking you to give me

penance for my rough words. On the other hand--Anyway, Father, you have not

found me a very dutiful penitent?'

'I expected castigation,' he said meekly. 'If the castigation is done, I

have come off better than I could have hoped.'

She raised herself, and took up her gloves that were lying on the little

table beside her sofa.

'You see'--she said, talking very fast--'I am an Englishwoman, and my race

is not a docile one. Here, in this village, I have noticed a good deal,

and the _massaja_ gossips to me. There was a fight in the street the other

night. The men were knifing each other. The _parroco_ sent them word that

they should come at once to his house--_per pacificarli_. They went. There

is a girl, living with her sister, whose husband has a bad reputation. The

_parroco_ ordered her to leave--found another home for her. She left. There

is a lad who made some blasphemous remarks in the street on the day of the

Madonna's procession. The _parroco_ ordered him to do penance. He did it.

But those things are not English. Perhaps they are Bavarian?'

He winced, but he had recovered his composure.

'Yes, madame, they are Bavarian also. But it seems that even an

Englishwoman can sometimes feel the need of another judgment than her own?'

She smiled. All the time that she had made her little speech about the

village, she had been casting quick glances along the road. It was evident

that her mind was only half employed with what she was saying. The

rose-flush in her cheeks, the dainty dress, the halo of fair hair gave her

back youth and beauty; and the priest gazed at her in astonishment.

'Ah!'--she said, with a vivacity that was almost violence--'here she is.

Father--please--!' And with a peremptory gesture, she signed to him to draw

back, as she had done, into the shadow, out of sight of the road.

But the advancing figure was plain to both of them.

Lucy mounted the hill with a slow and tired step. Her eyes were on the

ground. The whole young form drooped under the heat, and under a weight of

thought still more oppressive. As it came nearer a wave of sadness seemed

to come with it, dimming the sunshine and the green splendour of the woods.

As she passed momentarily out of sight behind some trees that sheltered the

gate of the courtyard, Mrs. Burgoyne crossed the _loggia_, and called to

her maid.

'Marie--be so good as to tell Miss Foster when she comes in that I have

gone out; that she is not to trouble about me, as I shall soon return; and

tell her also that I felt unusually well and strong.'

Then she turned and beckoned to Father Benecke.

'This way, Father, please!'

And she led him down the little stair that had taken Lucy to the garden the

night before. At the foot of the stairs she paused. The wall of the garden

divided them from the courtyard, and on the other side of it they could

hear Lucy speaking to the _massaja_.

'Now!' said Eleanor, 'quick I--before she discovers us!'

And opening the garden door with the priest's help she passed into the

field, and took a wide circuit to the right so as to be out of view of the

_loggia_.

'Dear madame, where are you going?' said the priest in some alarm. 'This is

too fatiguing for you.'

Eleanor took no notice. She, who for days had scarcely dragged one languid

foot after another, sped through the heat and over the broken ground like

one of the goldfinches in the convent garden. The old priest followed her

with difficulty. Nor did she pause till they were in the middle of the

Sassetto.

'Explain what we are doing!' he implored her, as she allowed him to press

his old limbs for a moment on his stick, and take breath.

She, too, leant against a tree panting.

'You said, Father, that Mr. Manisty was to leave you at midday.'

'And you wish to see him?' he cried.

'I am determined to see him,' she said in a low voice, biting her lip.

And again she was off, a gleam of whiteness gliding down, down, through the

cool green heart of the Sassetto, towards the Paglia.

They emerged upon the fringe of the wood, where amid scrub and sapling

trees stood the little sun-baked house.

From the distance came a sound of wheels--a carriage from Selvapendente

crossing the bridge over the Paglia?

Mrs. Burgoyne looked at the house for a moment in silence. Then, sheltered

under her large white parasol, she passed round to the side that fronted

the river.

There, in the shade, sat Manisty, his arms upon his knees, his head buried

in his hands.

He did not at first hear Mrs. Burgoyne's step, and she paused a little way

off. She was alone. The priest had not followed her.

At last, as she moved, either the sound of her dress or the noise of the

approaching wheels roused him. He looked up--started--sprang to his feet.

'Eleanor!--'

They met. Their eyes crossed. She shivered, for there were tears in his.

But through that dimness there shone the fierce unspoken question that had

leapt to them at the sight of his cousin--

'Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?'

CHAPTER XXIII

Eleanor was the first to break the silence.

'You have had a long pilgrimage to find us,' she said quietly. 'Yet perhaps

Torre Amiata might have occurred to you. It was you that praised it--that

proposed to find quarters at the convent.'

He stared at her in amazement.

'Eleanor--in God's name!' he broke out violently, 'tell me what this

all means! What has been the meaning of this mad--this extraordinary

behaviour?'

She tottered a little and leant against the wall of the house.

'Find me a chair, please, before we begin to talk. And--is that your fly?

Send it away--to wait under the trees. It can take me up the hill, when we

have finished.'

He controlled himself with difficulty and went round the house.

She pressed her hands upon her eyes to shut out the memory of his face.

'She has refused him!' she said to herself; 'and--what is more--she has

made him believe it!'

Very soon his step was heard returning. The woman he had left in the shade

listened for it, as though in all this landscape of rushing river and

murmuring wood it the one audible, significant sound. But when he came back

to her again, he saw nothing but a composed, expectant Eleanor; dressed,

in these wilds, with a dainty care which would have done honour to London

or Paris, with a bright colour in her cheeks, and the quiver of a smile on

her lips. Ill! He thought he had seldom seen her look so well. Had she not

always been of a thistle-down lightness? 'Exaggeration!--absurdity!' he

said to himself fiercely, carrying his mind back to certain sayings in a

girl's voice that were still ringing in his ears.

He, however, was in no mood to smile. Eleanor had thrown herself sideways

on the chair he had brought her; her arms resting on the back of it, her

delicate hands hanging down. It was a graceful and characteristic attitude,

and it seemed to him affectation--a piece of her fine-ladyism.

She instantly perceived that he was in a state of such profound and

passionate excitement that it was difficult for him to speak.

So she began, with a calmness which exasperated him:

'You asked me, Edward, to explain our escapade?'

He raised his burning eyes.

'What can you explain?--how can you explain?' he said roughly. 'Are you

going to tell me why my cousin and comrade hates me and plots against

me?--why she has inflicted this slight and outrage upon me--why, finally,

she has poisoned against me the heart of the woman I love?'

He saw her shrink. Did a cruel and secret instinct in him rejoice? He was

mad with rage and misery, and he was incapable of concealing it.

She knew it. As he dropped his head again in an angry stare at the grass

between them, she was conscious of a sudden childish instinct to put out

her hand and stroke the black curls and the great broad shoulders. He was

not for her; but, in the old days, who had known so well as she how to

soothe, manage, control him?

'I can't tell you those things--certainly,' she said, after a pause. 'I

can't describe what doesn't exist.'

And to herself she cried: 'Oh! I shall lie--lie--lie--like a fiend, if I

must!'

'What doesn't exist'?' he repeated scornfully. 'Will you listen to my

version of what has happened--the barest, unadorned tale? I was your host

and Miss Foster's. I had begun to show the attraction that Miss Foster had

for me, to offer her the most trifling, the most ordinary attention. From

the moment I was first conscious of my own feeling, I knew that you were

against me--that you were influencing--Lucy'--the name dropped from his

lips in a mingled anguish and adoration--'against me. And just as I was

beginning to understand my own heart--to look forward to two or three last

precious weeks in which to make, if I could, a better impression upon her,

after my abominable rudeness at the beginning--_you_ interfered--you, my

best friend! Without a word our party is broken up; my chance is snatched

from me; Miss Foster is spirited away. You and she disappear, and you leave

me to bear my affront--the outrage done me--as best I may. You alarm, you

distress all your friends. Your father takes things calmly, I admit. But

even he has been anxious. Aunt Pattie has been miserable. As for me--'

He rose, and began to pace up and down before her; struggling with his own

wrath.

'And at last'--he resumed, pausing in front of her--'after wandering up and

down Italy, I find you--in this remote place--by the merest chance. Father

Benecke said not a word. But what part he has played in it I don't yet

understand. In another half-hour I should have been off; and again you

would have made the veriest fool of me that over walked this earth. Why,

Eleanor?--why? What have I done to you?'

He stood before her--a superb, commanding presence. In his emotion all

unshapeliness of limb or movement seemed to have disappeared. Transfigured

by the unconsciousness of passion, he was all energy and all grace.

'Eleanor!--explain! Has our old friendship deserved this? Why have you done

this thing to me?--And, my God!'--he began to pace up and down again, his

hands in his pockets--'how well--how effectually you have gone to work! You

have had--Lucy--in your hands for six weeks. It is plain enough what has

been going on. This morning--on that hill--suddenly,'--he raised his hand

to his brow, as though the surprise, the ecstacy of the moment returned

upon him--'there among the trees--was her face! What I said I shall never

remember. But when a man feels as I do he has no need to take thought

what he shall say. And she? Impatience, coldness, aversion!--not a word

permitted of my long pilgrimage--not a syllable of explanation for this

slight, this unbearable slight that had been put upon me as her host,

her guardian, for the time being! You and she fly me as though I were no

longer fit to be your companion. Even the servants talked. Aunt Pattie and

I had to set ourselves at once to devise the most elaborate falsehoods, or

Heaven knows where the talk would have spread. How had I deserved such a

humiliation?--Yet, when I meet Miss Foster again, she behaves as though she

owed me not a word of excuse. All her talk of you and your health! I must

go away at once--because it would startle and disturb you to see me. She

had already found out by chance that I was here--she had begged Father

Benecke to use his influence with me not to insist on seeing you--not to

come to the convent. It was the most amazing, the most inexplicable thing!

What in the name of fortune does it mean? Are we all mad? Is the world and

everyone on it rushing together to Bedlam?'

Still she did not speak. Was it that his mere voice, the familiar torrent

of words, was delightful to her?--that she cared very little what he said,

so long as he was there, living, breathing, pleading before her?--that,

like Sidney, she could have cried to him: 'Say on, and all well said, still

say the same'?

But he meant to be answered. He came close to her.

'We have been comrades, Eleanor--fellow-workers--friends. You have come to

know me as perhaps no other woman has known me. I have shown you a thousand

faults. You know all my weaknesses. You have a right to despise me as an

unstable, egotistical, selfish fool; who must needs waste other people's

good time and good brains for his own futile purposes. You have a right

to think me ungrateful for the kindest help that ever man got. You have

a right as Miss Foster's friend--and perhaps, guessing as you do at some

of my past history,--to expect of me probation and guarantees. You have

a right to warn her how she gives away anything so precious as herself.

But you have not a right to inflict on me such suffering--such agony of

mind--as you have imposed on me the last six weeks! I deny it, Eleanor--I

deny it altogether! The punishment, the test goes beyond--far beyond--your

right and my offences!'

He calmed--he curbed himself.

'The reckoning has come, Eleanor. I ask you to pay it.'

She drew a long breath.

'But I can't go at that pace. You must give me time.'

He turned away in a miserable impatience.

She closed her eyes and thought a little, 'Now'--she said to herself--'now

is the time for lying. It must be done. Quick! no scruples!'

And aloud:

'You understand,' she said slowly, 'that Miss Foster and I had become much

attached to each other?'

'I understand.'

'That she had felt great sympathy for me in the failure of the book, and

was inclined--well, you have proof of it!--to pity me, of course a great

deal too much, for being a weakling. She is the most tender--the most

loving creature that exists.'

'How does that explain why you should have fled from me like the plague?'

he said doggedly.

'No--no--but--Anyway, you see Lucy was likely to do anything she could to

please me. That's plain, isn't it?--so far?'

Her head dropped a little to one side, interrogatively.

He made no reply. He still stood in front of her, his eyes bent upon her,

his hands in his pockets.

'Meanwhile'--the colour rushed over her face--'I had been, most innocently,

an eavesdropper.'

'Ah!' he said, with a movement, 'that night? I imagined it.'

'You were not as cautious as you might have been--considering all the

people about--and I heard.'

He waited, all ear. But she ceased to speak. She bent a little farther over

the back of the chair, as though she were making a mental enumeration of

the leaves of a tiny myrtle bush that grew near his heel.

'I thought that bit of truth would have stiffened the lies,' she thought to

herself; 'but somehow--they don't work.'

'Well: then, you see'--she threw back her head again and looked at him--'I

had to consider. As you say, I knew you better than most people. It was all

remarkably rapid--you will hardly deny that? For a fortnight you took no

notice of Lucy Foster. Then the attraction began--and suddenly--Well, we

needn't go into that any more; but with your character it was plain that

you would push matters on--that you would give her no time--that you would

speak, _coûte qua coûte_--that you would fling caution and delay to the

winds--and that all in a moment Lucy Foster would find herself confronted

by a great decision that she was not at all prepared to make. It was not

fair that she should even be asked to make it. I had become her friend,

specially. You will see there was a responsibility. Delay for both of

you--wasn't that to be desired? And no use whatever to go and leave you

the address!--you'll admit that?' she said hurriedly, with the accent of a

child trying to entrap the judgment of an angry elder who was bringing it

to book.

He stood there lost in wrath, bewilderment, mystification. Was there ever a

more lame, more ridiculous tale?

Then he turned quickly upon her, searching her face for some clue. A sudden

perception--a perception of horror--swept upon him. Eleanor's first flush

was gone; in its place was the pallor of effort and excitement. What a

ghost, what a spectre she had become! Manisty looked at her aghast,--at her

unsteady yet defiant eyes, at the uncontrollable trembling of the mouth she

did her best to keep at its hard task of smiling.

In a flash, he understood. A wave of red invaded the man's face and neck.

He saw himself back in the winter days, working, talking, thinking; always

with Eleanor; Eleanor his tool, his stimulus; her delicate mind and heart

the block on which he sharpened his own powers and perceptions. He recalled

his constant impatience of the barriers that hamper cold and cautious

people. He must have intimacy, feeling, and the moods that border on and

play with passion. Only so could his own gift of phrase, his own artistic

divinations develop to a fine subtlety and clearness, like flowers in a

kind air.

An experience,--for him. And for her? He remembered how, in a leisurely and

lordly way, he had once thought it possible he might some day reward his

cousin; at the end of things, when all other adventures were done.

Then came that tragi-comedy of the book; his disillusion with it; his

impatient sense that the winter's work upon it was somehow bound up in

Eleanor's mind with a claim on him that had begun to fret and tease; and

those rebuffs, tacit or spoken, which his egotism had not shrunk from

inflicting on her sweetness.

How could he have helped inflicting them? Lucy had come!--to stir in

him the deepest waters of the soul. Besides, he had never taken Eleanor

seriously. On the one hand he had thought of her as intellect, and

therefore hardly woman; on the other he had conceived her as too gentle,

too sweet, too sensitive to push anything to extremes. No doubt the flight

of the two friends and Eleanor's letter had been a rude awakening. He

had then understood that he had offended Eleanor, offended her both as a

friend, and as a clever woman. She had noticed the dawn of his love for

Lucy Foster, and had determined that he should still recognise her power

and influence upon his life.

This was part of his explanation. As to the rest, it was inevitable that

both his vanity and passion should speak soft things. A girl does not take

such a wild step, or acquiesce in it--till she has felt a man's power.

Self-assertion on Eleanor's part--a sweet alarm on Lucy's--these had been

his keys to the matter, so far. They had brought him anger, but also hope;

the most delicious, the most confident hope.

Now remorse shot through him, fierce and stinging--remorse and terror! Then

on their heels followed an angry denial of responsibility, mingled with

alarm and revolt. Was he to be robbed of Lucy because Eleanor had misread

him? No doubt she had imprinted what she pleased on Lucy's mind. Was he

indeed undone?--for good and all?

Then shame, pity, rushed upon him headlong. He dared not look at the face

beside him with its record of pain. He tried to put out of his mind what it

meant. Of course he must accept her lead. He was only too eager to accept

it; to play the game as she pleased. She was mistress! That he realised.

He took up the camp-stool on which he had been sitting when she arrived and

placed himself beside her.

'Well--that explains something'--he said more gently. 'I can't complain

that I don't seem to you or anyone a miracle of discretion; I can't

wonder--perhaps--that you should wish to protect Miss Foster, if--if you

thought she needed protecting. But I must think--I can't help thinking,

that you set about it with very unnecessary violence. And for yourself

too--what madness! Eleanor! what have you been doing to yourself?'

He looked at her reproachfully with that sudden and intimate penetration

which was one of his chief spells with women. Eleanor shrank.

'Oh! I am ill,' she said hastily; 'too ill in fact to make a fuss about. It

would only be a waste of time.'

'Of course you have found this place too rough for you. Have you any

comforts at all in that ruin? Eleanor, what a rash,--what a wild thing to

do!'

He came closer to her, and Eleanor trembled under the strong expostulating

tenderness of his face and voice. It was so like him--to be always somehow

in the right! Would he succeed, now as always, in doing with her exactly as

he would? And was it not this, this first and foremost that she had fled

from?

'No'--she said,--'no. I have been as well here as I should have been

anywhere else. Don't let us talk of it.'

'But I must talk of it. You have hurt yourself--and Heaven knows you have

hurt me--desperately. Eleanor--when I came back from that function the

day you left the Villa, I came back with the intention of telling you

everything. I knew you were Miss Foster's friend. I thought you were mine

too. In spite of all my stupidity about the book, Eleanor, you would have

listened to me?--you would have advised me?'

'When did you begin to think of Lucy?'

Her thin fingers, crossed over her brow, as she rested her arm on the back

of the chair, hid from him the eagerness, the passion, of her curiosity.

But he scented danger. He prepared himself to walk warily.

'It was after Nemi--quite suddenly. I can't explain it. How can one ever

explain those things?'

'What makes you want to marry her? What possible congruity is there between

her and you?'

He laughed uneasily.

'What's the good of asking those things? One's feeling itself is the

answer.'

'But I'm the spectator--the friend.'--The word came out slowly, with a

strange emphasis. 'I want to know what Lucy's chances are.'

'Chances of what?'

'Chances of happiness.'

'Good God!'--he said, with an impatient groan.--'You talk as though she

were going to give herself any opportunity to find out.'

'Well, let us talk so, for argument. You're not exactly a novice, you

know, in these things. How is one to be sure that you're not playing with

Lucy--as you played with the book--till you can go back to the play you

really like best?'

'What do you mean?' he cried, starting with indignation--'the play of

politics?'

'Politics--ambition--what you will. Suppose Lucy finds herself taken up and

thrown down--like the book?--when the interest's done?'

She uncovered her eyes, and looked at him steadily, coldly. It was an

Eleanor he did not know.

He sprang up in his anger and discomfort, and began to pace again in front

of her.

'Oh well--if you think as badly of me as that'--he said fiercely,--'I don't

see what good can come of this conversation.'

There was a pause. At the end of it, Eleanor said in another voice:

'Did you ever give her any indication of what you felt--before to-day?'

'I came near--in the Borghese gardens,' he said reluctantly. 'If she had

held out the tip of her little finger--But she didn't. And I should have

been a fool. It was too soon--too hasty. Anyway, she would not give me

the smallest opening. And afterwards--' He paused. His mind passed to his

night-wandering in the garden, to the strange breaking of the terra-cotta.

Furtively his gaze examined Eleanor's face. But what he saw of it told

him nothing, and again his instinct warned him to let sleeping dogs lie.

'Afterwards I thought things over, naturally. And I determined, that night,

as I have already said, to come to you and take counsel with you. I saw you

were out of charity with me. And, goodness knows, there was not much to

be said for me! But at any rate I thought that we, who had been such old

friends, had better understand each other; that you'd help me if I asked

you. You'd never yet refused, anyway.'

His voice changed. She said nothing for a little, and her hands still made

a penthouse for her face.

At last she threw him a question.

'Just now--what happened?'

'Good Heavens, as if I knew!' he said, with a cry of distress. 'I tried

to tell her how I had gone up and down Italy, seeking for her, hungering

for any shred of news of you. And she?--she treated me like a troublesome

intruder, like a dog that follows you unasked and has to be beaten back

with your stick!'

Eleanor smiled a little. His heart and his vanity had been stabbed alike.

Certainly he had something to complain of.

She dropped her hands, and drew herself erect.

'Well, yes,' she said in a meditative voice, 'we must think--we must see.'

As she sat there, rapt in a sudden intensity of reflection, the fatal

transformation in her was still more plainly visible; Manisty could hardly

keep his eyes from her. Was it his fault? His poor, kind Eleanor! He felt

the ghastly tribute of it, felt it with impatience, and repulsion. Must a

man always measure his words and actions by a foot-rule--lest a woman take

him too seriously? He repented; and in the same breath told himself that

his penalty was more than his due.

At last Eleanor spoke.

'I must return a moment to what we said before. Lucy Foster's ways,

habits, antecedents are wholly different from yours. Suppose there were a

chance for you. You would take her to London--expect her to play her part

there--in your world. Suppose she failed. How would you get on?'

'Eleanor--really!--am I a "three-tailed bashaw"?'

'No. But you are absorbing--despotic--fastidious. You might break that

girl's heart in a thousand ways--before you knew you'd done it. You don't

give; you take.'

'And you--hit hard!' he said, under his breath, resuming his walk.

She sat white and motionless, her eyes sparkling. Presently he stood still

before her, his features working with emotion.

'If I am incapable of love--and unworthy of hers,' he said in a stifled

voice,--'if that's your verdict--if that's what you tell her--I'd better

go. I know your power--don't dispute your right to form a judgment--I'll

go. The carriage is there. Good-bye.'

She lifted her face to his with a quick gesture.

'She loves you!'--she said, simply.

Manisty fell back, with a cry.

There was a silence. Eleanor's being was flooded with the strangest, most

ecstatic sense of deliverance. She had been her own executioner; and this

was not death--but life!

She rose. And speaking in her natural voice, with her old smile, she

said--'I must go back to her--she will have missed me. Now then--what shall

we do next?'

He walked beside her bewildered.

'You have taken my breath away--lifted me from Hell to Purgatory anyway,'

he said, at last, trying for composure. 'I have no plans for myself--no

particular hope--you didn't see and hear her just now! But I leave it all

in your hands. What else can I do?'

'No,' she said calmly. 'There is nothing else for you to do.'

He felt a tremor of revolt, so quick and strange was her assumption of

power over both his destiny and Lucy's. But he suppressed it; made no

reply.

They turned the corner of the house. 'Your carriage can take me up the

hill,' said Eleanor. 'You must ask Father Benecke's hospitality a little

longer; and you shall hear from me to-night.'

They walked towards the carriage, which was waiting a hundred yards

away. On the way Manisty suddenly said, plunging back into some of the

perplexities which had assailed him before Eleanor's appearance:

'What on earth does Father Benecke know about it all? Why did he never

mention that you were here; and then ask me to pay him a visit? Why did he

send me up the hill this morning? I had forgotten all about the convent. He

made me go.'

Eleanor started; coloured; and pondered a moment.

'We pledged him to secrecy as to his letters. But all priests are

Jesuits, aren't they?--even the good ones. I suppose he thought we had

quarrelled, and he would force us for our good to make it up. He is very

kind--and--rather romantic.'

Manisty said no more. Here, too, he divined mysteries that were best

avoided.

They stood beside the carriage. The coachman was on the ground remedying

something wrong with the harness.

Suddenly Manisty put out his hand and seized his companion's.

'Eleanor!'--he said imploringly--'Eleanor!'

His lips could not form a word more. But his eyes spoke for him. They

breathed compunction, entreaty; they hinted what neither could ever say;

they asked pardon for offences that could never be put into words.