, my dear," he said.

And, as he followed her to the presbytery, he sang softly to himself--

_"It is the miller's daughter,
And she is grown so dear, so dear,
That I would be the jewel
That trembles in her ear."_

PART FIFTH

I

It was Sunday. It was early morning. It was raining,--a fine quiet,
determined rain, that blurred the lower reaches of the valley, and
entirely hid the mountain-tops, so that one found it hard not to doubt a
little whether they were still there. Near at hand the garden was as if
a thin web of silver had been cast over it, pale and dim, where wet
surfaces reflected the diffused daylight. And just across the Rampio, on
the olive-clad hillside that rose abruptly from its brink, rather an
interesting process was taking place,--the fabrication of clouds, no
less. The hillside, with its rondure of blue-grey foliage, would lie for
a moment quite bare and clear; then, at some high point, a mist would
begin to form, would appear indeed to issue from the earth, as smoke
from a subterranean fire, white smoke with pearly shadows; would thicken
and spread out; would draw together and rise in an irregular spiral
column, curling, swaying, poising, as if uncertain what to do next; and
at last, all at once making up its mind, (how like a younker or a
prodigal!), would go sailing away, straggling away, amorphous, on a puff
of wind, leaving the hillside clear again;--till, presently, the process
would recommence _da capo_.

John and Annunziata, seated together on a marble bench in the shelter of
the great cloister, with its faded frescoes, at the north-eastern
extremity of the castle buildings, had been watching this element-play
for some minutes in silence. But by-and-by Annunziata spoke.

"What makes the cloud come out of the hill like that?" she asked, her
eyes anxiously questioning his. "I have seen it happen many times, but I
could never understand it. There cannot be a fire underneath?"

"If _you_ can't understand it, Mistress Wisdom," responded John, smiling
on her, "you surely mustn't expect a featherpate like me to. Between
ourselves, I don't believe any one can really understand it, though
there's a variety of the human species called scientists who might
pretend they could. It's all a part of that great scheme of miracles by
which God's world goes on, Nature, which nobody can really understand in
the very least. All that the chaps called scientists can re