wrought this horrible deed.'
'Amen,' he replied, 'it was her fate. Now let him come.' And so saying
he turned round--for some horror-stricken faces began to appear at the
windows--and slowly traversed the sun-lit piazza till he reached the
gateway, where he disappeared like a spectre.

"Meanwhile I held the poor gasping frame in my arms, almost swooning
myself from grief and terror. I called to my maid-servant, the
neighbours rushed out, and so we carried her in, and laid her on a bed.
But I saw too plainly that there was nothing to be done, and so I sent
the lad off as fast as he could go to fetch a priest. I scarcely hoped
though that she would live long enough to see him, so bending down I
asked her if she had anything to communicate. She husbanded her last
breath to ask me how her mother was. 'Just the same as for a month
past,' I replied. Then her dying breast heaved a deep sigh, and she
gasped out: 'Then he deceived me!' 'Who?' said I. She felt for her
pocket, and drew out a letter, the tenor of which was that if she
wished to find her mother still alive she must set out without delay,
for that the illness was a mortal one. This letter bore the priest's
signature, but was not in his handwriting. I made out from the few
words that she with difficulty whispered, that a youth from our village
had secretly delivered it to her the evening before. How he had found
out her lodging in Rome she had no idea, for she was living most
privately, and not in the same house as her lover, who had been to see
her as usual in the evening, and on reading the letter had forbidden
her to go home, saying that it was only a plot to allure her to
destruction, and she herself had taken that view of it, and promised
him not to go. But in the morning when she was alone, a fear came over
her that it might after all turn out to be true, and if so, her mother
would die and would curse her own child on her death-bed. So she took a
carriage, and promised the driver a double fare if he would take her in
half the usual time. She got out, however, at the foot of the hill,
wishing to reach her mother's house alone and unobserved. But as soon
as she neared the first houses she had a sense of some one following
her, and for protection she ran rather than walked towards my door,
when suddenly Domenico appeared behind her, and called out, without
however looking at her: 'What, Erminia, do we see you here again? That
is well, it was time you should come