cing down before him,
he saw, not twenty yards away, under a hawthorn in full blossom,--

"Madame Torrebianca, as I am alive," he gasped.

VI

Susanna was standing under the tree, gazing intently upwards; and she
was vehemently shaking her fist at its foliage, and making, from the
point of her lips, a sound, sibilant, explosive (something like
"Ts-s-s! Ts-s-s-s! Ts-s-s-s-s!"), that was clearly meant as an
intimidation. She had on a dark-blue frock, blue flannel I think,
plain to the verge of severity: a straight-falling jacket, a straight,
loose skirt: plain, but appropriate to the hour no doubt; and, instead
of a hat, she wore a scarf of black lace, draped over her black hair
mantilla-wise.

Anthony, glowing with a sense that he was in great luck, and trying to
think what practical step he should take to profit by it, watched her
for a minute before she caught sight of him. An obvious practical
step, she having evidently some trouble on her hands, might have been
to approach her with an offer of assistance. But if all who love are
poets, men near to love will be poets budding; and who was it said that
the obvious is the one thing a poet is incapable of seeing?

When, however, she did catch sight of him, abruptly, without
hesitation, she called him to her.

"Come here--come here at once," she called, and made an imperious
gesture. (I wonder whether she realised who he was, or thought no
further as yet, in her emergency, than just that here, providentially,
was a man who could help.)

Marvelling, palpitating, Anthony flew to obey.

"Look," said Susanna, breathlessly, pointing into the tree. "What is
one to do? He won't pay the slightest attention to me, and I have
nothing that I can throw."

She had, in her left hand, a small leather-bound book, apparently a
prayer-book, and, twisted round her wrist, a red-coral rosary; but I
suppose she would not have liked to throw either of these.

Bewildered a little by the suddenness with which the situation had come
to pass, but conscious, acutely, exultantly conscious of it as a
delectable situation,--exultantly conscious of her nearness to him, of
their solitude together, there in the privacy (as it were) of the
morning,--and tingling to the vibrations of her voice, to the freshness
and the warmth of her strong young beauty, Anthony was still able,
vaguely, half-mechanically, to lift his eyes, and look in the direction
whither she pointed. . .

The sp