atter; it
was a point of contact with mystery which always made her assume a grave
and attentive air, as did also certain tales of enchantment and magic.
She mounted a chair and said the few prayers she knew, and then assumed
the attitude she had seen the most pious women of town assume in church,
and began moving her lips as they did, repeating a wordless prayer.
Seeing her thus one acquainted with the terrible secret of the next hour
would have felt that the guardian angel of little children was standing
beside her at that moment, and admonishing her to pray for something
besides the vineyards and olive-groves of Valsolda, for something nearer
to her, something the angel did not name, and she neither knew nor could
put into words. The onlooker would have felt also that in these, her
inarticulate whisperings, there was an element of occult tenderness, and
tragedy, the docile surrender of a sweet soul to the admonitions of its
guardian angel, to the mysterious will of God.

At half-past two the great lowering clouds above Carona belched forth
another peal of thunder, to which the other great clouds above Boglia
and the Zocca d'i Ment immediately responded. Luisa ran out to the
terrace. The gondola was opposite S. Mamette, and was making straight
for the Calcinera. She could see quite plainly that the boatmen were
pulling hard. As Luisa laid aside the telescope the first gust of wind
swept through the loggia, banging doors and windows. Terrified by a
feeling that she would be too late, she hastily closed both doors and
windows, passed swiftly through the hall, seized an umbrella and went
out, without telling any one she was going, and without closing the
house-door behind her. She started towards Albogasio Inferiore. Just
beyond the cemetery, on the spot they call Maine, she met Ismaele.

"Where are you going in such weather, Signora Luisa?"

She answered that she was going to Albogasio, and passed on. When she
had gone about a hundred paces she remembered that she had not let
Veronica know she was going out, that she had not told her to close the
windows in the bedrooms, and look after Maria. She might send word by
Ismaele. But he had already disappeared round the corner of the
cemetery. In her heart she felt an impulse to go back, but there was not
time. The rumbling of the thunder was continuous; great, infrequent
drops were striking here and there on the maize; gusts of wind swept at
intervals through the mulberry-