reat Alps above, and
much covert on all sides. They entered a forest pathway, following chance
for safety. The dark leafage and low green roofing tasted sweeter to
their senses than clear air and sky. Dark woods are home to fugitives,
and here there was soft footing, a surrounding gentleness,--grass, and
moss with dead leaves peacefully flat on it. The birds were not timorous,
and when a lizard or a snake slipped away from her feet, it was amusing
to Vittoria and did not hurt her tenderness to see that they were feared.
Threading on beneath the trees, they wound by a valley's incline, where
tumbled stones blocked the course of a green water, and filled the lonely
place with one onward voice. When the sun stood over the valley they sat
beneath a chestnut tree in a semicircle of orange rock to eat the food
which Angelo had procured at the inn. He poured out wine for her in the
hollow of a stone, deep as an egg-shell, whereat she sipped, smiling at
simple contrivances; but no smile crossed the face of Angelo. He ate and
drank to sustain his strength, as a weapon is sharpened; and having done,
he gathered up what was left, and lay at her feet with his eyes fixed
upon an old grey stone. She, too, sat brooding. The endless babble and
noise of the water had hardened the sense of its being a life in that
solitude. The floating of a hawk overhead scarce had the character of an
animated thing. Angelo turned round to look at her, and looking upward as
he lay, his sight was smitten by spots of blood upon one of her torn
white feet, that was but half-nestled in the folds of her dress. Bending
his head down, like a bird beaking at prey, he kissed the foot
passionately. Vittoria's eyelids ran up; a chord seemed to snap within
her ears: she stole the shamed foot into concealment, and throbbed, but
not fearfully, for Angelo's forehead was on the earth. Clumps of grass,
and sharp flint-dust stuck between his fists, which were thrust out stiff
on either side of him. She heard him groan heavily. When he raised his
face, it was white as madness. Her womanly nature did not shrink from
caressing it with a touch of soothing hands.

She chanced to say, 'I am your sister.'

'No, by God! you are not my sister,' cried the young man. 'She died
without a stain of blood; a lily from head to foot, and went into the
vault so. Our mother will see that. She will kiss the girl in heaven and
see that.' He rose, crying louder: 'Are there echoes here?' But h