yst? Did he expect her to join him here for some secret interview? Had
she any idea of his agitation?'

His heart gave a great throb--it was she!

She was alone. Slowly she descended the steps, and when she reached the
first terrace she stopped beside the fountain. Andrea followed her
intently with his eyes; her every movement, every attitude sent a
delicious thrill through him, as if each one of them had some special
significance, were a form of individual expression. Thus she passed down
the succession of steps and terraces, appearing and disappearing, now
completely hidden by the rose-bushes, now only her head or her rounded
bust visible above them. Sometimes the thickly interlaced boughs hid her
for several minutes, then, where the bushes were thinner, the colour of
her dress would show through them and the pale straw of her hat would
catch the sunlight. The nearer she came the more slowly she walked,
loitering among the verdant shrubs, stopping to gaze at the cypresses,
stooping to gather a handful of fallen leaves. From the last terrace but
one, she waved her hand to Andrea standing waiting for her at the foot
of the steps, and threw down to him the leaves she had gathered, which
first rose fluttering in the air like a cloud of butterflies and then
floated down--now fast, now slow,--noiseless as snowflakes on the
stones.

'Well?' she asked, leaning over the balustrade, 'what have you got for
me?'

Andrea bent his knee to the step and lifted his clasped hands.

'Nothing!' he was obliged to confess. 'I implore you to forgive me;
but, this morning, you and the sun together filled the whole world for
me with sweetness and light. _Adoremus!_

The confession was perfectly sincere, as was the adoration also, though
both were uttered in a tone of banter. Donna Maria evidently felt the
sincerity, for she coloured slightly as she said with peculiar
earnestness--

'No--don't--please don't kneel.'

He rose, and she offered him her hand, adding, 'I will forgive you this
time because you are an invalid.'

She wore a dress of a curious indefinable dull rusty red, one of those
so-called aesthetic colours one meets with in the pictures of the Early
Masters or of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was arranged in a multitude of
straight regular folds beginning immediately under the arms, and was
confined at the waist by a wide blue-green ribbon, of the pale tinge of
a faded turquoise, that fell in a great knot at her side. The s