mighty mountains rose sharp and clear before her.
It seemed to her as if she had only to stretch out her hand to touch
them. The morning lights rested on them with a fresh glory; the crisp
air, laden with a scent of herbs, came circling round, and stirred the
curls upon her pretty head. Enrica wore the same quaintly-cut dress,
that swept upon the ground, as when Nobili was there. She had no
other. All had been burnt in the fire. Sitting there, she plucked the
moss that grew upon the wall, and watched it as it dropped into the
abyss. This was shrouded in deepest shadow. The rush of the distant
river in the valley below was audible. Enrica raised her head and
listened. That river flowed round the walls of Lucca. Nobili was
there. Happy river! Oh, that it would bear her to him on its frothy
current!--Surely her life-path lay straight before her now!--straight
into paradise! Not a stone is on that path; not a rise, not a fall.

"In a week I will return," Nobili had said. In a week. And his eyes
had rested upon her as he spoke the words in a mist of love. Enrica's
face was pale and almost stern, and her blue eyes had strange lights
and shadows in them. How came it that, since he had left her, the
world had grown so old and gray?--that all the impulse of her nature,
the quick ebb and flow of youth and hope, was stilled and faded out,
and all her thoughts absorbed into a dreadful longing? She could not
tell, nor could she tell what ailed her; but she felt that she was
changed. She tried to listen to the prattle of the two children--to
Pipa singing above:

"Come out! come out!
Never despair!
Father and mother and sweetheart,
All will be there!"

Enrica could not listen. It was the dark abyss below that drew her
toward its silent bosom. She hung over the wall, her eyes measuring
its depths. What ailed her? Was she smitten mad by the wild tumult of
joy that had swept over her as she stood hand-in-hand with Nobili? Or
was she on the eve of some crisis?--a crisis of life and death? Oh!
why had Nobili left her? When would he return? She could not tell. All
she knew was, that in the streaming sunlight of this wondrous morning,
when earth and heaven were as fair as on the first creation-day,
without him all was dark, sad, and dreary.

CHAPTER II.

A STORM AT THE VILLA.

A footstep was heard upon the gravel. The dogs shut up in the cave
scratched furiously, then barked loudly. Following the footsteps a
barehea