ed the guide as
to the road they had taken, and the hour of their departure, and having
heard his answers, she could not understand why they had not met him.

"Perhaps," said the guide, "your brother took the higher path; we came
by the lower one."

But Colomba only shook her head and asked more questions. In spite of
her natural firmness of character, increased as it was by her proud
desire to conceal any sign of weakness before strangers, she could not
hide her anxiety, and as soon as she had informed them of the attempted
reconciliation, and of its unfortunate issue, this was shared by the
colonel and Miss Lydia. Miss Nevil became very uneasy, and wanted to
have messengers sent off in every direction, and her father offered
to remount at once and set out with the guide in search of Orso. Her
guests' alarm recalled Colomba to a sense of her duties as a hostess.
She strove to force a smile as she pressed the colonel to come to table,
and suggested twenty plausible reasons, which she herself demolished
within an instant, to account for her brother's delay. The colonel,
feeling it to be his duty, as a man, to reassure the ladies, put forward
his own explanation.

"I'll wager," he said, "that della Rebbia has come across some game or
other. He has not been able to stand out against that temptation, and we
shall soon see him come in with a heavy bag. 'Pon my soul," he went on,
"we did hear four shots fired on the road. Two of them were louder
than the others, and I said to my girl, 'I'll bet anything that's della
Rebbia out shooting! My gun is the only one that would make that noise.'"

Colomba turned pale, and Lydia, who was watching her closely, had
no difficulty in guessing the suspicions with which the colonel's
conjecture had inspired her. After a few minutes' silence, Colomba
eagerly inquired whether the two louder reports had been heard before or
after the others. But neither the colonel, his daughter, nor the guide
had paid much attention to this all-important detail.

Toward one o'clock, as none of Colomba's messengers had yet returned,
she gathered all her courage, and insisted that her guests should sit
down to table with her. But, except the colonel, none of them could eat.
At the slightest sound in the square, Colomba ran to the window. Then
drearily she returned to her place, and struggled yet more drearily
to carry on a trivial conversation, to which nobody paid the slightest
attention, and which was br