e.

"Meanwhile, you make it clear, I am afraid," he argued, "that we should
gain only our labour for our pains in plotting a restoration."

"We should have the excitement of plotting," laughingly argued she.

"A plotter's best reward, like an artist's, you suggest, is the
pleasure he takes in his work. But now you are inciting me to look at
it again from the selfish point of view, for which a moment ago you
were upbraiding me," he reminded her.

"_Do_ look at it from the selfish point of view," inconsistent and
unashamed, she urged. "Think of your lands, your houses, your palaces
and gardens, Castel San Guido, Isola Nobile, think of your pictures,
your jewels, the thousand precious heirlooms that are rightly yours,
think of your mere crude money. How can you bear the thought that
these are in the possession of a stranger--these, your inheritance, the
inheritance of nearly eight hundred years? Oh, if I were in your
place, the wrong of it would fill the universe for me. I could not
endure it."

"One has no choice but to endure it," said he. "One benumbs resentment
with a fatalistic 'needs must.'"

"One would do better to inflame resentment with a defiant 'where there
's a will there 's a way,'" Susanna answered.

"The way is not plain to see."

"No--but we must discover the way. That"--she smiled--"shall be the
aim of our plotting."

And again for some time they walked on without speaking.

"If she could only guess how little my heart's desire is centred upon
the lands and houses of Sampaolo," thought Anthony, "how entirely it is
centred upon something much nearer home. I wonder what she would do if
I should tell her."

And at that thought his heart winced with delight and terror.

He looked sidewise at her. Her dark hair curled about her temples, and
drooped in a loose mass behind; her dark eyes shone; there was a warm
colour in her cheeks. Her head held high, her body defined itself in
lines of strength and beauty, as she walked by the cliff's edge,
resisting the wind, with the sea and the sky for background. He looked
at her, and wondered what would happen if he should tell her; and his
heart glowed with delight, and winced with delight and terror,--glowed
with delight in the supreme reality of her presence, winced with
delight and terror at the imagination of telling her.

And then the suspended rain came down in a sudden pelting shower; and
Anthony put up his umbrella. To keep in its shelt