night; and
the house all unguarded; and nobody there to give counsel to the poor
mute simpleton whom he had now to tend his beasts.

"He will come after the theatre," he said.

The evening seemed very long.

The late night came. Bruno set his door open, cold though it was; so
that he should catch the earliest sound of footsteps. The boy, no doubt,
he thought, would drive to the foot of the hill, and walk the rest.

It was a clear night after the rain of many days.

He could see the lights of the city in the plain fourteen miles or so
away.

What was doing down there?

It seemed strange;--Signa being welcomed there, and he himself knowing
nothing--only hearing a stray word or two by chance.

Once or twice in his younger days he had seen the city in gala over some
great artist it delighted to honour; he could imagine the scene and
fashion of it all well enough; he did not want to be noticed in it, only
he would have liked to have been told, and to have gone down and seen
it, quietly wrapped in his cloak, amongst the throng.

That was how he would have gone, had he been told.

He set the supper out as well as he could, and put wine ready, and the
rose-tree in the midst. In the lamplight the little feast did not look
so badly.

He wove wicker-work round some uncovered flasks by way of doing
something. The bitter wind blew in; he did not mind that; his ear was
strained to listen. Midnight passed. The wind had blown his lamp out. He
lighted two great lanthorns, and hung them up against the doorposts; it
was so dark upon the hills.

One hour went; another; then another. There was no sound. When yet
another passed, and it was four of the clock, he said:

"He will not come to-night. No doubt they kept him late, and he was too
tired. He will be here by sunrise."

He threw himself on his bed for a little time, and closed the door. But
he left the lanthorns hanging outside; on the chance.

He slept little; he was up while it was still dark, and the robins were
beginning their first twittering notes.

"He will be here to breakfast," he said to himself, and he left the
table untouched, only opening the shutters so that when day came it
should touch the rose at once and wake it up; it looked so drooping, as
though it felt the cold.

Then he went and saw to his beasts and to his work.

The sun leapt up in the cold, broad, white skies. Signa did not come
with it.

The light brightened. The day grew. Noon brough