After Manisty had carried off his sister, Eleanor and Lucy sat together in the garden, talking sometimes, but more often silent, till the sun began to drop towards Ostia and the Mediterranean.

'You must come in,' said Eleanor, laying her hand on the girl's. 'The chill is beginning.'

Lucy rose, conscious again of the slight giddiness of fever, and they walked towards the house. Half way, Lucy said with sudden, shy energy—

'I do wish I were quite myself! It is I who ought to be helping you through this—and I am just nothing but a worry!'

Eleanor smiled.

'You distract our thoughts,' she said. 'Nothing could have made this visit of Alice's other than a trial.'

She spoke kindly, but with that subtle lack of response to Lucy's sympathy which had seemed to spring first into existence on the day of Nemi. Lucy had never felt at ease with her since then, and her heart, in truth, was a little sore. She only knew that something intangible and dividing had arisen between them; and that she felt herself once more the awkward, ignorant girl beside this delicate and high-bred woman, on whose confidence and friendship she had of course no claim whatever. Already she was conscious of a certain touch of shame when she thought of her new dresses and of Mrs. Burgoyne's share in them. Had she been after all the mere troublesome intruder? Her swimming head and languid spirits left her the prey of these misgivings.

Aunt Pattie met them at the head of the long flight of stone stairs which led from the garden to the first floor. Her finger was on her lip.

'Will you come through my room?' she said under her breath. 'Edward and
Alice are in the library.'

So they made a round—every room almost in the apartment communicating with every other—and thus reached Aunt Pattie's sitting-room and the salon. Lucy sat shivering beside the wood-fire in Aunt Pattie's room, which Miss Manisty had lit as soon as she set eyes upon her; while the two other ladies murmured to each other in the salon.

The rich wild light from the Campagna flooded the room; the day sank rapidly and a strange hush crept through the apartment. The women working among the olives below had gone home; there were no sounds from the Marinata road; and the crackling of the fire alone broke upon the stillness—except for a sound which emerged steadily as the silence grew. It seemed to be a man's voice reading. Once it was interrupted by a laugh out of all scale—an ugly, miserable laugh—and Lucy shuddered afresh.

Meanwhile Aunt Pattie was whispering to Eleanor.

'He was wonderful—quite wonderful! I did not think he could—'

'He can do anything he pleases. He seems to be reading aloud?'

'He is reading some poems, my dear, that she wrote at Venice. She gave them to him to look at the day she came. I daresay they're quite mad, but he's reading and discussing them as though they were the most important things, and it pleases her,—poor, poor Alice! First, you know, he quieted her very much about the money. I listened at the door sometimes, before you came in. She seems quite reconciled to him.'

'All the same, I wish this night were over and the doctor here!' said Eleanor, and Miss Manisty, lifting her hands, assented with all the energy her small person could throw into the gesture.

* * * * *

Lucy, in the course of dressing for dinner, decided that to sit through a meal was beyond her powers, and that she would be least in the way if she went to bed. So she sent a message to Miss Manisty, and was soon lying at ease, with the window opposite her bed opened wide to Monte Cavo and the moonlit lake. The window on her left hand, which looked on the balcony, she herself had closed and fastened with all possible care. And she had satisfied herself that her key was in her door. As soon as Miss Manisty and Eleanor had paid her their good-night visit, she meant to secure herself.

And presently Aunt Pattie came in, to see that she had her soup and had taken her quinine. The little old lady did not talk to Lucy of her niece, nor of the adventure of the afternoon, though she had heard all from Eleanor. Her family pride, as secret as it was intense, could hardly endure this revelation of the family trouble and difficulty to a comparative stranger, much as she liked the stranger. Nevertheless her compunctions on the subject showed visibly. No cares and attentions could be too much for the girl in her charge, who had suffered annoyance at the hands of a Manisty, while her own natural protectors were far away.

'Benson, my dear, will come and look after you the last thing,' said the old lady, not without a certain stateliness. 'You will lock your door—and I hope you will have a very good night.'

Half an hour later came Mrs. Burgoyne. Lucy's candle was out. A wick floating on oil gave a faint light in one corner of the room. Across the open window a muslin curtain had been drawn, to keep out bats and moths. But the moonlight streamed through, and lay in patches on the brick floor. And in this uncertain illumination Lucy could just see the dark pits of Eleanor's eyes, the sharp slightness of her form, the dim wreath of hair.

'You may be quite happy,' said Eleanor bending over her, and speaking almost in a whisper. 'She is much quieter. They have given her a stronger sleeping draught and locked all the doors—except the door into Dalgetty's room. And that is safe, for Dalgetty has drawn her bed right across it. If Alice tries to come through, she must wake her, and Dalgetty is quite strong enough to control her. Besides, Manisty would be there in a moment. So you may be quite, quite at ease.'

Lucy thanked her.

'And you?' she said wistfully, feeling for Eleanor's hand.

Eleanor yielded it for an instant, then withdrew it, and herself.—'Oh, thank you—I shall sleep excellently. Alice takes no interest, alas! in me! You are sure there is nothing else we can do for you?' She spoke in a light, guarded voice, that seemed to Lucy to come from a person miles away.

'Thank you—I have everything.'

'Benson will bring you milk and lemonade. I shall send Marie the first thing for news of you. You know she sleeps just beyond you, and you have only to cross the dining room to find me. Good-night. Sleep well.'

As Eleanor closed the door behind her, Lucy was conscious of a peculiar sinking of heart. Mrs. Burgoyne had once made all the advances in their friendship. Lucy thought of two or three kisses that formerly had greeted her cheek, to which she had been too shy and startled to respond. Now it seemed to her difficult to imagine that Mrs. Burgoyne had ever caressed her, had ever shown herself so sweet and gay and friendly as in those first weeks when all Lucy's pleasure at the villa depended upon her. What was wrong?—what had she done?

She lay drooping, her hot face pressed upon her hands, pondering the last few weeks, thoughts and images passing through her brain with a rapidity and an occasional incoherence that was the result of her feverish state. How much she had seen and learnt in these flying days!—it often seemed to her as though her old self had been put off along with her old clothes. She was carried back to the early time when she had just patiently adapted herself to Mr. Manisty's indifference and neglect, as she might have adapted herself to any other condition of life at the villa. She had made no efforts. It had seemed to her mere good manners to assume that he did not want the trouble of her acquaintance, and be done with it. To her natural American feeling indeed, as the girl of the party, it was strange and disconcerting that her host should not make much of her. But she had soon reconciled herself. After all, what was he to her or she to him?

Then, of a sudden, a whole swarm of incidents and impressions rushed upon memory. The semi-darkness of her room was broken by images, brilliant or tormenting—Mr. Manisty's mocking look in the Piazza of St. Peter's—his unkindness to his cousin—his sweetness to his friend—the aspect, now petulant, even childish, and now gracious and commanding beyond any other she had ever known, which he had worn at Nemi. His face, upturned beside her, as she and her horse climbed the steep path; the extraordinary significance, fulness, warmth of the nature behind it; the gradual unveiling of the man's personality, most human, faulty, self-willed, yet perpetually interesting and challenging, whether to the love or hate of the bystander:—these feelings or judgments about her host pulsed through the girl's mind with an energy that she was powerless to arrest. They did not make her happy, but they seemed to quicken and intensify all the acts of thinking and living.

At last, however, she succeeded in recapturing herself, in beating back the thoughts which, like troops over-rash on a doubtful field, appeared to be carrying her into the ambushes and strongholds of an enemy. She was impatient and scornful of them. For, crossing all these memories of things, new or exciting, there was a constant sense of something untoward, something infinitely tragic, accompanying them, developing beside them. In this feverish silence it became a nightmare presence filling the room.

What was the truth about Mr. Manisty and his cousin? Lucy searched her own innocent mind and all its new awakening perceptions in vain. The intimacy of the friendship, as she had first seen it; the tone used by Mr. Manisty that afternoon in speaking of Mrs. Burgoyne; the hundred small signs of a deep distress in her, of a new detachment in him—Lucy wandered in darkness as she thought of them, and yet with vague pangs and jarring vibrations of the heart.

Her troubled dream was suddenly broken by a sound. She sprang up trembling. Was it an angry, distant voice? Did it come from the room across the balcony? No!—it was the loud talking of a group of men on the road outside. She shook all over, unable to restrain herself. 'What would Uncle Ben think of me?' she said to herself in despair. For Uncle Ben loved calm and self-control in women, and had often praised her for not being flighty and foolish, as he in his bachelor solitude conceived most other young women to be.

She looked down at her bandaged wrist. The wound still ached and burned from the pressure of that wild grip which she had not been able to ward off from it. Lucy herself had the strength of healthy youth, but she had felt her strength as nothing in Alice Manisty's hands. And the tyranny of those black eyes!—so like her brother's, without the human placable spark—and the horror of those fierce possessing miseries that lived in them!

Perhaps after all Uncle Ben would not have thought her so cowardly! As she sat up in bed, her hands round her knees, a pitiful home-sickness invaded her. A May scent of roses coming from the wall below the open window recalled to her the spring scents at home—not these strong Italian scents, but thin northern perfumes of lilac and lavender, of pine-needles and fresh grass. It seemed to her that she was on the slope behind Uncle Ben's house, with the scattered farms below—and the maple green in the hollow—and the grassy hillsides folded one upon another—and the gleam of a lake among them—and on the furthest verge of the kind familiar scene, the blue and shrouded heads of mountain peaks. She dropped her head on her knees, and could hear the lowing of cattle and the clucking of hens; she saw the meeting-house roof among the trees, and groups scattered through the lanes on the way to the prayer meeting, the older women in their stuff dresses and straw bonnets, the lean, bronzed men.

Benson's knock dispelled the mirage. The maid brought lemonade and milk, brushed Lucy's long hair and made all straight and comfortable.

When her tendance was over she looked at the door and then at Lucy. 'Miss Manisty said, Miss, I was to see you had your key handy. It's there all right—but it is the door that's wrong. Never saw such flimsy things as the doors in all this place.'

And Benson examined the two flaps of the door, filled with that frank contempt for the foreigner's powers and intelligence which makes the English race so beloved of Europe.

'Why, the floor-bolts'll scarcely hold, neither of them; and the lock's that loose, it's a disgrace. But I shouldn't think the people that own this place had spent a shilling on it since I was born. When you go to lay hold on things they're just tumbling to bits.'

'Oh! never mind, Benson,' said Lucy—shrinking. 'I'm sure it'll be all right. Thank you—and good-night.'

She and Benson avoided looking at each other; and the maid was far too highly trained to betray any knowledge she was not asked for. But when she had taken her departure Lucy slipped out of bed, turned the key, and tightened the bolts herself. It was true that their sockets in the brick floor were almost worn away; and the lock-case seemed scarcely to hold upon the rotten wood. The wood-work, indeed, throughout the whole villa was not only old and worm-eaten, but it had been originally of the rudest description, meant for summer uses, and a villeggiatura existence in which privacy was of small account. The Malestrini who had reared the villa above the Campagna in the late seventeenth century had no money to waste on the superfluities of doors that fitted and windows that shut; he had spent all he had, and more, on the sprawling putti and fruit wreaths of the ceilings, and the arabesques of the walls. And now doors, windows, and shutters alike, shrunken and scorched and blistered by the heat of two hundred summers, were dropping into ruin.

The handling of this rotten lock and its rickety accompaniments suddenly brought back a panic fear on Lucy. What if Alice Manisty and the wind, which was already rising, should burst in upon her together? She looked down upon her night-gown and her bare feet. Well, at least she would not be taken quite unawares! She opened her cupboard and brought from it a white wrapper of a thin woollen stuff which she put on. She thrust her feet into her slippers, and so stood a moment listening, her long hair dropping about her. Nothing! She lay down, and drew a shawl over her. 'I won't—won't—sleep,' she said to herself.

And the last sound she was conscious of was the cry of the little downy owl—so near that it seemed to be almost at her window.

* * * * *

'You are unhappy,' said a voice beside her.

Lucy started. The self in her seemed to wrestle its way upward from black and troubled depths of sleep. She opened her eyes. Someone was bending over her. She felt an ineffable horror, but not the smallest astonishment. Her dreams had prophesied; and she saw what she foreknew.

In the wavering light she perceived a stooping form, and again she noticed a whiteness of hands and face set in a black frame.

'Yes!' she said, lifting herself on her elbow. 'Yes!—what do you want?'

'You have been sobbing in your sleep,' said the voice. 'I know why you are unhappy. My brother is beginning to love you—you might love him. But there is some one between you—and there always will be. There is no hope for you—unless I show you the way out.'

'Miss Manisty!—you oughtn't to be here,' said Lucy, raising herself higher in bed and trying to speak with absolute self-command. 'Won't you go back to bed—won't you let me take you?'

And she made a movement. Instantly a hand was put out. It seized her arm first gently, then irresistibly.

'Don't, don't do that,' said the voice. 'It makes me angry—and—that hurts.'

Alice Manisty raised her other hand to her head, with a strange piteous gesture. Lucy was struck with the movement of the hand. It was shut over something that it concealed.

'I don't want to make you angry,' she said, trying to speak gently and keep down the physical tumult of the heart; 'but it is not good for you to be up like this. You are not strong—you ought to have rest.'

The grip upon her arm relaxed.

'I don't rest now'—a miserable sigh came out of the darkness. 'I sleep sometimes—but I don't rest. And it used all to be so happy once—whether I was awake or asleep. I was extraordinarily happy, all the winter, at Venice. One day Octave and I had a quarrel. He said I was mad—he seemed to be sorry for me—he held my arms and I saw him crying. But it was quite a mistake—I wasn't unhappy then. My brother John was always with me, and he told me the most wonderful things—secrets that no one else knows. Octave could never see him—and it was so strange—I saw him so plain. And my mother and father were there too—there was nothing between me and any dead person. I could see them and speak to them whenever I wished. People speak of separation from those who die. But there is none—they are always there. And when you talk to them, you know that you are immortal as they are—only you are not like them. You remember this world still—you know you have to go back to it. One night John took me—we seemed to go through the clouds—through little waves of white fire—and I saw a city of light, full of spirits—the most beautiful people, men and women—with their souls showing like flames through their frail bodies. They were quite kind—they smiled and talked to me. But I cried bitterly—because I knew I couldn't stay with them—in their dear strange world—I must come back—back to all I hated—all that strangled and hindered me.'

The voice paused a moment. Through Lucy's mind certain incredible words which it had spoken echoed and re-echoed. Consciousness did not master them; but they made a murmur within it through which other sounds hardly penetrated. Yet she struggled with herself—she remembered that only clearness of brain could save her.

She raised herself higher on her pillows that she might bring herself more on a level with her unbidden guest.

'And these ideas gave you pleasure?' she said, almost with calm.

'The intensest happiness,' said the low, dragging tones. 'Others pity me.—"Poor creature—she's mad"—I heard them say. And it made me smile. For I had powers they knew nothing of; I could pass from one world to another; one place to another. I could see in a living person the soul of another dead long ago. And everything spoke to me—the movement of leaves on a tree—the eyes of an animal—all kinds of numbers and arrangements that come across one in the day. Other people noticed nothing. To me it was all alive—everything was alive. Sometimes I was so happy, so ecstatic, I could hardly breathe. The people who pitied me seemed to me dull and crawling beings. If they had only known! But now—'

A long breath came from the darkness—a breath of pain. And again the figure raised its hand to its head.

'Now—somehow, it is all different. When John comes, he is cold and unkind—he won't open to me the old sights. He shows me things instead that shake me with misery—that kill me. My brain is darkening—its powers are dying out. That means that I must let this life go—I must pass into another. Some other soul must give me room. Do you understand?'

Closer came the form. Lucy perceived the white face and the dimly burning eyes, she felt herself suffocating, but she dared make no sudden move for fear of that closed hand and what it held.

'No—I don't understand,' she said faintly; 'but I am sure—no good can come to you—from another's harm.'

'What harm would it be? You are beginning to love—and your love will never make you happy. My brother is like me. He is not mad—but he has a being apart. If you cling to him, he puts you from him—if you love him he tires. He has never loved but for his own pleasure—to complete his life. How could you complete his life? What have you that he wants? His mind now is full of you—his senses, his feeling are touched—but in three weeks he would weary of and despise you. Besides—you know—you know well—that is not all. There is another woman—whose life you must trample on—and you are not made of stuff strong enough for that. No, there is no hope for you, in this existence—this body. But there is no death; death is only a change from one form of being to another. Give up your life, then—as I will give up mine. We will escape together. I can guide you—I know the way. We shall find endless joy—endless power! I shall be with Octave then, as and when I please—and you with Edward. Come!'

The face bent nearer, and the iron hold closed again stealthily on the girl's wrist. Lucy lay with her own face turned away and her eyes shut. She scarcely breathed. A word of prayer passed through her mind—an image of her white-haired uncle, her second father left alone and desolate.

Suddenly there was a quick movement beside her. Her heart fluttered wildly. Then she opened her eyes. Alice Manisty had sprung up, had gone to the window, and flung back the muslin curtains. Lucy could see her now quite plainly in the moonlight—the haggard energy of look and movement, the wild dishevelled hair.

'I knew the end was come—this afternoon,' said the hurrying voice. 'When I came out to you, as I walked along the terrace—the sun went out! I saw it turn black above the Campagna—all in a moment—and I said to myself, "What will the world do without the sun?—how will it live?" And now—do you see?'—she raised her arm, and Lucy saw it for an instant as a black bar against the window, caught the terrible dignity of gesture,—'there is not one moon—but many! Look at them! How they hurry through the clouds—one after the other! Do you understand what that means? Perhaps not—for your sight is not like mine. But I know. It means that the earth has left its orbit—that we are wandering—wandering in space—like a dismasted vessel! We are tossed this way and that, sometimes nearer to the stars—and sometimes further away. That is why they are first smaller—and then larger. But the crash must come at last—death for the world—death for us all—'

Her hands fell to her side, the left hand always tightly closed—her head drooped; her voice, which had been till now hoarse and parched as though it came from a throat burnt with fever, took a deep dirge-like note. Noiselessly Lucy raised herself—she measured the distance between herself and the door—between the mad woman and the door. Oh God!—was the door locked? Her eyes strained through the darkness. How deep her sleep must have been that she had heard no sound of its yielding! Her hand was ready to throw off the shawl that covered her, when she was startled by a laugh—a laugh vile and cruel that seemed to come from a new presence—another being. Alice Manisty rapidly came back to her, stood between her bed and the wall, and Lucy felt instinctively that some hideous change had passed.

'Dalgetty thought that all was safe, so did Edward. And indeed the locks were safe—the only doors that hold in all the villa—I tried yours in the afternoon while Manisty and the priest were talking! But mine held. So I had to deal with Dalgetty.' She stooped, and whispered:—'I got it in Venice one day—the chemist near the Rialto. She might have found it—but she never did—she is very stupid. I did her no harm—I think. But if it kills her, death is nothing!—nothing!—only the gate of life. Come!—come! prove it!'

A hand darted and fell, like a snake striking. Lucy just threw herself aside in time—she sprang up—she rushed—she tore at the door—pulling at it with a frantic strength. It yielded with a crash, for the lock was already broken. Should she turn left or right?—to the room of Mrs. Burgoyne's maid, or to Mr. Manisty's library? She chose the right and fled on. She had perhaps ten seconds start, since the bed had been between her enemy and the door. But if any other door interposed between her and succour, all was over!—for she heard a horrible cry behind her, and knew that she was pursued. On she dashed, across the landing at the head of the stairs. Ah! the dining-room door was open! She passed it, and then turned, holding it desperately against her pursuer.

'Mr. Manisty! help!'

The agonised voice rang through the silent rooms. Suddenly—a sound from the library—a chair overturned—a cry—a door flung open. Manisty stood in the light.

He bounded to her side. His strength released hers. The upper part of the door was glass, and that dark gasping form on the other side of it was visible to them both, in a pale dawn light from the glass passage.

'Go!'—he said—'Go through my room—find Eleanor!'

She fled. But as she entered the room, she tottered—she fell upon the chair that Manisty had just quitted,—and with a long shudder that relaxed all her young limbs, her senses left her.

Meanwhile the whole apartment was alarmed. The first to arrive upon the scene was the strong housemaid, who found Alice Manisty stretched upon the floor of the glass passage, and her brother kneeling beside her, his clothes and hands torn in the struggle with her delirious violence. Alfredo appeared immediately afterwards; and then Manisty was conscious of the flash of a hand-lamp, and the soft, hurrying step of Eleanor Burgoyne.

She stood in horror at the entrance of the glass passage. Manisty gave his sister into Alfredo's keeping as he rose and went towards her.

'For God's sake'—he said under his breath—'go and see what has happened to Dalgetty.'

He took for granted that Lucy had taken refuge with her, and Eleanor stayed to ask no questions, but fled on to Dalgetty's room. As she opened the door the fumes of chloroform assailed her, and there on the bed lay the unfortunate maid, just beginning to moan herself back to consciousness from beneath the chloroformed handkerchief that had reduced her to impotence.

Her state demanded every care. While Manisty and the housemaid Andreina conveyed Alice Manisty, now in a state of helpless exhaustion, to her room, and secured her there, Alfredo ran for the Marinata doctor. Eleanor and Aunt Pattie forced brandy through the maid's teeth, and did what they could to bring back warmth and circulation.

They were still busy with their task when the elderly Italian arrived who was the communal doctor and chemist of the village. The smell of the room, the sight of the woman, was enough. The man was efficient and discreet, and he threw himself into his work without more questions than were absolutely necessary. In the midst of their efforts Manisty reappeared, panting.

'Ought he not to see Miss Foster too?' he said anxiously to Eleanor
Burgoyne.

Eleanor looked at him in astonishment.

A smothered exclamation broke from him. He rushed away, back to the library which he had seen Lucy enter.

The cool clear light was mounting. It penetrated the wooden shutters of the library and mingled with the dying light of the lamp which had served him to read with through the night, beside which, in spite of his utmost efforts, he had fallen asleep at the approach of dawn. There, in the dream-like illumination, he saw Lucy lying within his deep arm-chair. Her face was turned away from him and hidden against the cushion; her black hair streamed over the white folds of her wrapper: one arm was beneath her, the other hung helplessly over her knee.

He went up to her and called her name in an agony.

She moved slightly, made an effort to rouse herself and raised her hand. But the hand fell again, and the word half-formed upon her lips died away. Nothing could be more piteous, more disarmed. Yet even her disarray and helplessness were lovely; she was noble in her defeat; her very abandonment breathed youth and purity; the man's wildly surging thoughts sank abashed.

But words escaped him—words giving irrevocable shape to feeling. For he saw that she could not hear.

'Lucy!—Lucy—dear, beautiful Lucy!'

He hung over her in an ardent silence, his eyes breathing a respect that was the very soul of passion, his hand not daring to touch even a fold of her dress. Meanwhile the door leading to the little passage-room opened noiselessly. Eleanor Burgoyne entered. Manisty was not aware of it. He bent above Lucy in a tender absorption speaking to her as he might have spoken to a child, calling to her, comforting and rousing her. His deep voice had an enchanter's sweetness; and gradually it wooed her back to life. She did not know what he was saying to her, but she responded. Her lids fluttered; she moved in her chair, a deep sigh lifted her breast.

At that moment the door in Eleanor's hand escaped her and swung to. Manisty started back and looked round him.

'Eleanor!—is that you?'

In the barred and ghostly light Eleanor came slowly forward. She looked first at Lucy—then at Manisty. Their eyes met.

Manisty was the first to move uneasily.

'Look at her, Eleanor!—poor child!—Alice must have attacked her in her room. She escaped by a marvel. When I wrestled with Alice, I found this in her hand. One second more, and she would have used it on Miss Foster.'

He took from his pocket a small surgical knife, and looked, shuddering, at its sharpness and its curved point.

Eleanor too shuddered. She laid her hand on Lucy's shoulder, while Manisty withdrew into the shadows of the room.

Lucy raised herself by a great effort. Her first half-conscious impulse was to throw herself into the arms of the woman standing by her. Then as she perceived Eleanor clearly, as her reason came back, and her gaze steadied, the impulse died.

'Will you help me?' she said, simply—holding out her hand and tottering to her feet.

A sudden gleam of natural feeling lit up the frozen whiteness of Eleanor's face. She threw her arm round Lucy's waist, guiding her. And so, closely entwined, the two passed from Manisty's sight.