dead leaves peacefully flat on it. The
birds were not timorous, and when a lizard or a snake slipped away from
her feet, it was amusing to Vittoria and did not hurt her tenderness to
see that they were feared. Threading on beneath the trees, they wound by
a valley's incline, where tumbled stones blocked the course of a green
water, and filled the lonely place with one onward voice. When the sun
stood over the valley they sat beneath a chestnut tree in a semicircle
of orange rock to eat the food which Angelo had procured at the inn. He
poured out wine for her in the hollow of a stone, deep as an egg-shell,
whereat she sipped, smiling at simple contrivances; but no smile crossed
the face of Angelo. He ate and drank to sustain his strength, as a
weapon is sharpened; and having done, he gathered up what was left, and
lay at her feet with his eyes fixed upon an old grey stone. She, too,
sat brooding. The endless babble and noise of the water had hardened
the sense of its being a life in that solitude. The floating of a hawk
overhead scarce had the character of an animated thing. Angelo turned
round to look at her, and looking upward as he lay, his sight was
smitten by spots of blood upon one of her torn white feet, that was but
half-nestled in the folds of her dress. Bending his head down, like
a bird beaking at prey, he kissed the foot passionately. Vittoria's
eyelids ran up; a chord seemed to snap within her ears: she stole the
shamed foot into concealment, and throbbed, but not fearfully,
for Angelo's forehead was on the earth. Clumps of grass, and sharp
flint-dust stuck between his fists, which were thrust out stiff on
either side of him. She heard him groan heavily. When he raised his
face, it was white as madness. Her womanly nature did not shrink from
caressing it with a touch of soothing hands.

She chanced to say, 'I am your sister.'

'No, by God! you are not my sister,' cried the young man. 'She died
without a stain of blood; a lily from head to foot, and went into the
vault so. Our mother will see that. She will kiss the girl in heaven
and see that.' He rose, crying louder: 'Are there echoes here?' But his
voice beat against the rocks undoubted.

She saw that a frenzy had seized him. He looked with eyes drained of
human objects; standing square, with stiff half-dropped arms, and an
intense melody of wretchedness in his voice.

'Rinaldo, Rinaldo!' he shouted: 'Clelia!--no answer from man or ghost.
She is dead.