s, carrying off the young
man with his weapons, as though on some death-dealing errand, recalled
Orso's fears to her, and she fancied she beheld his evil genius dragging
him to his ruin. Orso, who was already in the saddle, raised his head
and caught sight of her. Either because he had guessed her thought, or
desired to send her a last farewell, he took the Egyptian ring, which he
had hung upon a ribbon, and carried it to his lips. Blushing, Miss Lydia
stepped back from the window, then returning to it almost at once, she
saw the two Corsicans cantering their little ponies rapidly toward the
mountains. Half an hour later the colonel showed them to her, through
his glasses, riding along the end of the bay, and she noticed that
Orso constantly turned his head toward the town. At last he disappeared
behind the marshes, the site of which is now filled by a flourishing
nursery garden.

Miss Lydia glanced at herself in the glass, and thought she looked pale.

"What must that young man think of me," said she, "and what did I think
of him? And why did I think about him? . . . A travelling acquaintance!
. . . What have I come to Corsica for? . . . Oh! I don't care for him!
. . . No! no! and besides the thing is impossible . . . And Colomba . . .
Fancy me sister-in-law to a _voceratrice_, who wears a big dagger!"

And she noticed she was still holding King Theodore's dagger in her
hand. She tossed it on to her toilette table. "Colomba, in London,
dancing at Almacks! . . . Good heavens! what a lion[*] that would be, to
show off! . . . Perhaps she'd make a great sensation! . . . He loves me,
I'm certain of it! He is the hero of a novel, and I have interrupted his
adventurous career. . . . But did he really long to avenge his father
in true Corsican fashion? . . . He was something between a Conrad and a
dandy . . . I've turned him into nothing but a dandy! . . . And a dandy
with a Corsican tailor! . . ."

[*] At this period this name was used in England for people
who were the fashion because they had something
extraordinary about them.

She threw herself on her bed, and tried to sleep--but that proved an
impossibility, and I will not undertake to continue her soliloquy,
during which she declared, more than a hundred times over, that Signor
della Rebbia had not been, was not, and never should be, anything to
her.

CHAPTER IX

Meanwhile Orso was riding along beside his sister. At first the speed at
which t