ad of me, amid the
elms. I quitted the road and entered the woodland. A little way I still
rode; then, dismounting, I tethered my mule, and went forward cautiously
on foot.

I found them in a little sunken dell by a tiny rivulet. Lying on my
belly in the long grass above, I looked down upon them with a black
hatred of jealousy in my heart.

They were reclining there, in that cool, fragrant spot in the shadow of
a great beech-tree. A cloth had been spread upon the ground, and upon
this were platters of roast meats, white bread and fruits, and a flagon
of wine, a second flagon standing in the brook to cool.

My Lord Gambara was talking and she was regarding him with eyes that
were half veiled, a slow, insolent smile upon her matchless face.
Presently at something that he said she laughed outright, a laugh so
tuneful and light-hearted that I thought I must be dreaming all this. It
was the gay, frank, innocent laughter of a child; and I never heard in
all my life a sound that caused me so much horror. He leaned across to
her, and stroked her velvet cheek with his delicate hand, whilst she
suffered it in that lazy fashion that was so peculiarly her own.

I stayed for no more. I wriggled back a little way to where a clump of
hazel permitted me to rise without being seen. Thence I fled the spot.
And as I went, my heart seemed as it must burst, and my lips could frame
but one word which I kept hurling out of me like an imprecation, and
that word was "Trull!"

Two nights ago had happened enough to stamp her soul for ever with
sorrow and despair. Yet she could sit there, laughing and feasting and
trulling it lightly with the Legate!

The little that remained me of my illusions was shivered in that hour.
There was, I swore, no good in all the world; for even where goodness
sought to find a way, it grew distorted, as in my mother's case. And yet
through all her pietism surely she had been right! There was no peace,
no happiness save in the cloister. And at last the full bitterness of
penitence and regret overtook me when I reflected that by my own act I
had rendered myself for ever unworthy of the cloister's benign shelter.

CHAPTER IV. THE ANCHORITE OF MONTE ORSARO

I went blindly through the tangle of undergrowth, stumbling at every
step and scarce noticing that I stumbled; and in this fashion I came
presently back to my mule.

I mounted and rode amain, not by the way that I had come, but westward;
not by road,