The sun had already deserted the eastern side of the villa when, on the morning following these events, Lucy woke from a fitful sleep to find Benson standing beside her. Benson had slept in her room since the dawn; and, thanks to exhaustion and the natural powers of youth, Lucy came back to consciousness, weak but refreshed, almost free from fever and in full possession of herself. Nevertheless, as she raised herself in bed to drink the tea that Benson offered her—as she caught a glimpse through the open window of the convent-crowned summit and wooded breast of Monte Cavo, flooded with a broad white sunlight—she had that strange sense of change, of a yesterday irrevocably parted from to-day, that marks the entry into another room of life. The young soul at such times trembles before a power unknown, yet tyrannously felt. All in a moment without our knowledge or co-operation something has happened. Life will never be again as it was last week. 'How?—or why?' the soul cries. 'I knew nothing—willed nothing.' And then dimly, through the dark of its own tumult, the veiled Destiny appears.

Benson was not at all anxious that Lucy should throw off the invalid.

'And indeed, Miss, if I may say so, you'll be least in the way where you are. They're expecting the doctor from Rome directly.'

The maid looked at her curiously. All that the household knew was that Miss Alice Manisty had escaped from her room in the night, after pinioning Dalgetty's arms and throwing a chloroformed handkerchief over her face. Miss Foster, it seemed, had been aroused and alarmed, and Mr. Manisty coming to the rescue had overpowered his sister by the help of the stout cameriera, Andreina. This was all that was certainly known.

Nor did Lucy shew herself communicative. As the maid threw back all the shutters and looped the curtains, the girl watched the summer light conquer the room with a shiver of reminiscence.

'And Mrs. Burgoyne?' she asked eagerly.

The maid hesitated.

'She's up long ago, Miss. But she looks that ill, it's a pity to see her. She and Mr. Manisty had their coffee together an hour ago—and she's been helping him with the arrangements. I am sure it'll be a blessing when the poor lady's put away. It would soon kill all the rest of you.'

'Will she go to-day, Benson?' said Lucy, in a low voice.

The maid replied that she believed that was Mr. Manisty's decision, that he had been ordering a carriage, and that it was supposed two nurses were coming with the doctor. Then she enquired whether she might carry good news of Lucy to Miss Manisty and the master.

Lucy hurriedly begged they might be told that she was quite well, and nobody was to take the smallest trouble about her any more. Benson threw a sceptical look at the girl's blanched cheek, shook her head a little, and departed.

A few minutes afterwards there was a light tap at the door and Eleanor
Burgoyne entered.

'You have slept?—you are better,' she said, standing at Lucy's bedside.

'I am only ashamed you should give me a thought,' the girl protested. 'I should be up now but for Benson. She said I should be out of the way.'

'Yes,' said Eleanor quietly. 'That is so.' She hesitated a moment, and then resumed—'If you should hear anything disagreeable don't be alarmed. There will be a doctor and nurses. But she is quite quiet this morning—quite broken—poor soul! My cousins are going into Rome with her. The home where she will be placed is on Monte Mario. Edward wishes to assure himself that it is all suitable and well managed. And Aunt Pattie will go with him.'

Through the girl's mind flashed the thought—'Then we shall be alone together all day,'—and her heart sank. She dared not look into Mrs. Burgoyne's tired eyes. The memory of words spoken to her in the darkness—of that expression she had surprised on Mrs. Burgoyne's face as she woke from her swoon in the library, suddenly renewed the nightmare in which she had been living. Once more she felt herself walking among snares and shadows, with a trembling pulse.

Yet the feeling which rose to sight was nothing more than a stronger form of that remorseful tenderness which had been slowly invading her during many days. She took Eleanor's hand in hers and kissed it shyly.

'Then I shall look after you,' she said trying to smile. 'I'll have my way this time!'

'Wasn't that a carriage?' said Eleanor hurriedly. She listened a moment.
Yes—a carriage had drawn up. She hastened away.

Lucy, left alone, could hear the passage of feet through the glass passage, and the sound of strange voices, representing apparently two men, and neither of them Mr. Manisty.

She took a book from her table and tried not to listen. But she could not distract her mind from the whole scene which she imagined must be going on,—the consultation of the doctors, the attitude of the brother.

How had Mr. Manisty dealt with his sister the night before? What weapon was in Alice Manisty's hand? Lucy remembered no more after that moment at the door, when Manisty had rushed to her relief, bidding her go to Mrs. Burgoyne. He himself had not been hurt, or Mrs. Burgoyne would have told her. Ah!—he had surely been kind, though strong. Her eyes filled. She thought of the new light in which he had appeared to her during these terrible days with his sister; the curb put on his irritable, exacting temper; his care of Alice, his chivalry towards herself. In another man such conduct would have been a matter of course. In Manisty it touched and captured, because it could not have been reckoned on. She had done him injustice, and—unknowing—he had revenged himself.

The first carriage apparently drove away; and after an interval another replaced it. Nearly an hour passed:—then sudden sounds of trampling feet and opening doors broke the silence which had settled over the villa. Voices and steps approached, entered the glass passage. Lucy sprang up. Benson had flung the window looking on the balcony and the passage open, but had fastened across it the outside sun-shutters. Lucy, securely hidden herself, could see freely through the wooden strips of the shutter.

Ah!—sad procession! Manisty came first through the passage, the sides of which were open to the balcony. His sister was on his arm, veiled and in black. She moved feebly, sometimes hesitating and pausing, and Lucy distinguished the wild eyes, glancing from side to side. But Manisty bent his fine head to her; his left hand secured hers upon his arm; he spoke to her gently and cheerfully. Behind walked Aunt Pattie, very small and nervously pale, followed by a nurse. Then two men—Lucy recognised one as the Marinata doctor—and another nurse; then Alfredo, with luggage.

They passed rapidly out of her sight. But the front door was immediately below the balcony, and her ear could more or less follow the departure. And there was Mrs. Burgoyne, leaning over the balcony. Mr. Manisty spoke to her from below. Lucy fancied she caught her own name, and drew back indignant with herself for listening.

Then a sound of wheels—the opening of the iron gate—the driving up of another carriage—some shouting between Alfredo and Andreina—and it was all over. The villa was at peace again.

Lucy drew herself to her full height, in a fierce rigidity of self-contempt. What was she still listening for—still hungering for? What seemed to have gone suddenly out of heaven and earth, with the cessation of one voice?

She fell on her knees beside her bed. It was natural to her to pray, to throw herself on a sustaining and strengthening power. Such prayer in such a nature is not the specific asking of a definite boon. It is rather a wordless aspiration towards a Will not our own—a passionate longing, in the old phrase, to be 'right with God,' whatever happens, and through all the storms of personal impulse.

* * * * *

An hour later Lucy entered the salon just as Alfredo, coming up behind her, announced that the midday breakfast was ready. Mrs. Burgoyne was sitting near the western window with her sketching things about her. Some western clouds had come up from the sea to veil the scorching heat with which the day had opened. Eleanor had thrown the sun-shutters hack, and was finishing and correcting one of the Nemi sketches she had made during the winter.

She rose at sight of Lucy.

'Such a relief to throw oneself into a bit of drawing!' She looked down at her work. 'What hobby do you fly to?'

'I mend the house-linen, and I tie down the jam,' said Lucy, laughing. 'You have heard me play—so you know I don't do that well! And I can't draw a hay-stack.'

'You play very well,' said Eleanor embarrassed, as they moved towards the dining-room.

'Just well enough to send Uncle Ben to sleep when he's tired! I learnt it for that. Will you play to me afterwards?'

'With pleasure,' said Eleanor, a little formally.

How long the luncheon seemed! Eleanor, a white shadow in her black transparent dress, toyed with her food, eat nothing, and complained of the waits between the courses.

Lucy reminded her that there were fifty steps between the kitchen and their apartment. Eleanor did not seem to hear her; she had apparently forgotten her own remark, and was staring absently before her. When she spoke next it was about London, and the June season. She had promised to take a young cousin, just 'come out,' to some balls. Her talk about her plans was careless and languid, but it showed the woman naturally at home in the fashionable world, with connections in half the great families, and access to all doors. The effect of it was to make Lucy shrink into herself. Mrs. Burgoyne had spoken formerly of their meeting in London. She said nothing of it to-day, and Lucy felt that she could never venture to remind her.

From Eleanor's disjointed talk, also, there flowed another subtle impression. Lucy realised what kinship means to the English wealthy and well-born class—what a freemasonry it establishes, what opportunities it confers. The Manistys and Eleanor Burgoyne were part of a great clan with innumerable memories and traditions. They said nothing of them; they merely took them for granted with all that they implied, the social position, the 'consideration,' the effect on others.

The American girl is not easily overawed. The smallest touch of English assumption in her new acquaintances would have been enough, six weeks before, to make Lucy Foster open her dark eyes in astonishment or contempt. That is not the way in which women of her type understand life.

But to-day the frank forces of the girl's nature felt themselves harassed and crippled. She sat with downcast eyes, constrainedly listening and sometimes replying. No—it was very true. Mr. Manisty was not of her world. He had relations, friendships, affairs, infinitely remote from hers—none of which could mean anything to her. Whereas his cousin's links with him were the natural inevitable links of blood and class. He might be unsatisfactory or uncivil; but she had innumerable ways of recovering him, not to be understood even, by those outside.

When the two women returned to the salon, a kind of moral distance had established itself between them. Lucy was silent; Eleanor restless.

Alfredo brought the coffee. Mrs. Burgoyne looked at her watch as he retired.

'Half past one,' she said in a reflective voice. 'By now they have made all arrangements.'

'They will be back by tea-time?'

'Hardly,—but before dinner. Poor Aunt Pattie! She will be half dead.'

'Was she disturbed last night?' asked Lucy in a low voice.

'Just at the end. Mercifully she heard nothing till Alice was safe in her room.'

Then Eleanor's eyes dwelt broodingly on Lucy. She had never yet questioned the girl as to her experiences. Now she said with a certain abruptness—

'I suppose she forced your door?'

'I suppose so.—But I was asleep.'

'Were you terribly frightened when you found her there?'

As she spoke Eleanor said to herself that in all probability Lucy knew nothing of Manisty's discovery of the weapon in Alice's hand. While she was helping the girl to bed, Lucy, in her dazed and shivering submission, was true to her natural soberness and reserve. Instead of exaggerating, she had minimised what had happened. Miss Alice Manisty had come to her room,—had behaved strangely,—and Lucy, running to summon assistance, had roused Mr. Manisty in the library. No doubt she might have managed better, both then and in the afternoon. And so, with a resolute repression of all excited talk, she had turned her blanched face from the light, and set herself to go to sleep, as the only means of inducing Mrs. Burgoyne also to leave her and rest.

Eleanor's present question, however, set the girl's self-control fluttering, so sharply did it recall the horror of the night. She curbed herself visibly before replying.

'Yes,—I was frightened. But I don't think she could have hurt me. I should have been stronger when it came to the point.'

'Thank God Edward was there!' cried Eleanor.

'Where did he come to you?'

'At the dining-room door. I could not have held it much longer. Then he told me to go to you. And I tried to. But I only just managed to get to that chair in the library.'

'Mr. Manisty found you quite unconscious.'

A sudden red dyed Lucy's cheek.

'Mr. Manisty!—was he there? I hoped he knew nothing about it. I only saw you.'

Eleanor's thought drew certain inferences. But they gave her little comfort. She turned away abruptly, complaining of the heat, and went to the piano.

Lucy sat listening, with a book on her knee. Everything seemed to have grown strangely unreal in this hot silence of the villa—the high room with its painted walls—the marvellous prospect outside, just visible in sections through the half-closed shutters—herself and her companion. Mrs. Burgoyne played snatches of Brahms and Chopin; but her fingers stumbled more than usual. Her attention seemed to wander.

Inevitably the girl's memory went back to the wild things which Alice Manisty had said to her. In vain she rebuked herself. The fancies of a mad-woman were best forgotten,—so common-sense told her. But over the unrest of her own heart, over the electrical tension and dumb hostility that had somehow arisen between her and Eleanor Burgoyne, common-sense had small power. She could only say to herself with growing steadiness of purpose that it would be best for her not to go to Vallombrosa, but to make arrangements as soon as possible to join the Porters' friends at Florence, and go on with them to Switzerland.

To distract herself, she presently drew towards her the open portfolio of Eleanor's sketches, which was lying on the table. Most of them she had seen before, and Mrs. Burgoyne had often bade her turn them over as she pleased.

She looked at them, now listlessly, now with sudden stirs of feeling. Here was the niched wall of the Nemi temple; the arched recesses overgrown with ilex and fig and bramble; in front the strawberry pickers stooping to their work. Here, an impressionist study of the lake at evening, with the wooded height of Genzano breaking the sunset; here a sketch from memory of Aristodemo teasing the girls. Below this drawing, lay another drawing of figures. Lucy drew it out, and looked at it in bewilderment.

At the foot of it was written—'The Slayer and the Slain.' Her thoughts rushed back to her first evening at the villa—to the legend of the priest. The sketch indeed contained two figures—one erect and triumphant, the other crouching on the ground. The prostrate figure was wrapped in a cloak which was drawn over the head and face. The young victor, sword in hand, stood above his conquered enemy.

Or—Was it a man?

Lucy looked closer, her cold hand shaking on the paper. The vague classical dress told nothing. But the face—whose was it?—and the long black hair? She raised her eyes towards an old mirror on the wall in front, then dropped them to the drawing again, in a sudden horror of recognition. And the piteous figure on the ground, with the delicate woman's hand?—Lucy caught her breath. It was as though the blow at her heart, which Manisty had averted the night before, had fallen.

Then she became aware that Eleanor had turned round upon her seat at the piano, and was watching her.

'I was looking at this strange drawing,' she said. Her face had turned a sudden crimson. She pushed the drawing from her and tried to smile.

Eleanor rose and came towards her.

'I thought you would see it,' she said. 'I wished you to see it.'

Her voice was hoarse and shaking. She stood opposite to Lucy, supporting herself by a marble table that stood near.

Lucy's colour disappeared, she became as pale as Eleanor.

'Is this meant for me?'

She pointed to the figure of the victorious priest. Eleanor nodded.

'I drew it the night after our Nemi walk,' she said with a fluttering breath. 'A vision came to me so—of you—and me.'

Lucy started. Then she put her arms on the table and dropped her face into her arms. Her voice became a low and thrilling murmur that just reached Eleanor's ears.

'I wish—oh! how I wish—that I had never come here!'

Eleanor wavered a moment, then she said with gentleness, even with sweetness:

'You have nothing to blame yourself for. Nor has anyone. That picture accuses no one. It draws the future—which no one can stop or change—but you.'

'In the first place,' said Lucy, still hiding her eyes and the bitter tears that dimmed them—'what does it mean? Why am I the slayer?—and—and—you the slain? What have I done? How have I deserved such a thing?'

Her voice failed her. Eleanor drew a little nearer.

'It is not you—but fate. You have taken from me—or you are about to take from me—the last thing left to me on this earth! I have had one chance of happiness, and only one, in all my life, till now. My boy is dead—he has been dead eight years. And at last I had found another chance—and after seven weeks, you—you—are dashing it from me!'

Lucy drew back from the table, like one that shrinks from an enemy.

'Mrs. Burgoyne!'

'You don't know it!' said Eleanor calmly. 'Oh! I understand that. You are too good—too loyal. That's why I am talking like this. One could only dare it with some one whose heart one knew. Oh! I have had such gusts of feeling towards you—such mean, poor feeling. And then, as I sat playing there, I said to myself, "I'll tell her! She will find that drawing, and—I'll tell her! She has a great, true nature—she'll understand. Why shouldn't one try to save oneself? It's the natural law. There's only the one life."'

She covered her eyes with her hand an instant, choking down the sob which interrupted her. Then she moved a little nearer to Lucy.

'You see,' she said, appealing,—'you were very sweet and tender to me one day. It's very easy to pretend to mourn with other people—because one thinks one ought—or because it makes one liked. I am always pretending in that way—I can't help it. But you—no: you don't say what you don't feel, and you've the gift to feel. It's so rare—and you'll suffer from it. You'll find other people doing what I'm doing now—throwing themselves upon you—taking advantage—trusting to you. You pitied me because I had lost my boy. But you didn't know—you couldn't guess how bare my life has been always—but for him. And then—this winter—' her voice changed and broke—'the sun rose again for me. I have been hungry and starving for years, and it seemed as though I—even I!—might still feast and be satisfied.

'It would not have taken much to satisfy me. I am not young, like you—I don't ask much. Just to be his friend, his secretary, his companion—in time—perhaps—his wife—when he began to feel the need of home, and peace—and to realise that no one else was so dear or so familiar to him as I. I understood him—he me—our minds touched. There was no need for "falling in love." One had only to go on from day to day—entering into each other's lives—I ministering to him and he growing accustomed to the atmosphere I could surround him with, and the sympathy I could give him—till the habit had grown so deep into heart and flesh that it could not be wrenched away. His hand would have dropped into mine, almost without his willing or knowing it…. And I should have made him happy. I could have lessened his faults—stimulated his powers. That was my dream all these later months—and every week it seemed to grow more reasonable, more possible. Then you came—'

She dropped into a chair beside Lucy, resting her delicate hands on the back of it. In the mingled abandonment and energy of her attitude, there was the power that belongs to all elemental human emotion, made frankly visible and active. All her plaintive clinging charm had disappeared. It was the fierceness of the dove—the egotism of the weak. Every line and nerve of the fragile form betrayed the exasperation of suffering and a tension of the will, unnatural and irresistible. Lucy bowed to the storm. She lay with her eyes hidden, conscious only of this accusing voice close to her,—and of the song of two nightingales without, rivalling each other among the chestnut trees above the lower road. Eleanor resumed after a momentary pause—a momentary closing of the tired eyes, as though in search of calm and recollection.

'You came. He took no notice of you. He was rude and careless—he complained that our work would be interrupted. It teased him that you should be here—and that you represented something so different from his thoughts and theories. That is like him. He has no real tolerance. He wants to fight, to overbear, to crush, directly he feels opposition. Among women especially, he is accustomed to be the centre—to be the master always. And you resisted—silently. That provoked and attracted him. Then came the difficulties with the book—and Mr. Neal's visit. He has the strangest superstitions. It was ill-luck, and I was mixed up with it. He began to cool to me—to avoid me. You were here; you didn't remind him of failure. He found relief in talking to you. His ill-humour would all have passed away like a child's sulkiness, but that—Ah! well!—'

She raised her hand with a long, painful sigh, and let it drop.

'Don't imagine I blame anyone. You were so fresh and young—it was all so natural. Yet somehow I never really feared—after the first evening I felt quite at ease. I found myself drawn to like—to love—you. And what could you and he have in common? Then on the Nemi day I dared to reproach him—to appeal to the old times—to show him the depth of my own wound—to make him explain himself. Oh! but all those words are far, far too strong for what I did? Who could ever suppose it to their advantage to make a scene with him—to weary or disgust him? It was only a word—a phrase or two here and there. But he understood,—and he gave me my answer. Oh! what humiliations we women can suffer from a sentence—a smile—and show nothing—nothing!'

Her face had begun to burn. She lifted her handkerchief to brush away two slow tears that had forced their way. Lucy's eyes had been drawn to her from their hiding-place. The girl's brow was furrowed, her lips parted; there was a touch of fear—unconscious, yet visible—in her silence.

'It was that day, while you and he were walking about the ruins, that a flash of light came to me. I suppose I had seen it before. I know I had been unhappy long before! But as long as one can hide things from oneself—it seems to make them not true,—as though one's own will still controlled them. But that day—after our walk—when we came back and found you on the hill-side! How was it your fault? Yet I could almost have believed that you had invented the boys and the stone! Certainly he spared me nothing. He had eyes and ears only for you. After he brought you home all his thoughts were for you. Nobody else's fatigues and discomforts mattered anything. And it was the same with Alice. His only terrors were for you. When he heard that she was coming, he had no alarms for Aunt Pattie or for me. But you must be shielded—you must be saved from everything repulsive or shocking. He sat up last night to protect you—and even in his sleep—he heard you.'

Her voice dropped. Eleanor sat staring before her into the golden shadows of the room, afraid of what she had said, instinctively waiting for its effect on Lucy.

And Lucy crouched no longer. She had drawn herself erect.

'Mrs. Burgoyne, is it kind—is it bearable—that you should say these things to me? I have not deserved them! No! no!—I have not. What right have you? I can't protect myself—I can't escape you—but—'

Her voice shook. There was in it a passion of anger, pain, loneliness, and yet something else—the note of something new-born and transforming.

'What right?' repeated Eleanor, in low tones—tones almost of astonishment. She turned to her companion. 'The right of hunger—the right of poverty—the right of one pleading for a last possession!—a last hope!'

Lucy was silenced. The passion of the older woman bore her down, made the protest of her young modesty seem a mere trifling and impertinence. Eleanor had slid to her knees. Her face had grown tremulous and sweet. A strange dignity quivered in the smile that transformed her mouth as she caught the girl's reluctant hands and drew them against her breast.

'Is it forbidden to cry out when grief—and loss—go beyond a certain point? No!—I think not. I couldn't struggle with you—or plot against you—or hate you. Those things are not in my power. I was not made so. But what forbids me to come to you and say?—"I have suffered terribly. I had a dreary home. I married, ignorantly, a man who made me miserable. But when my boy came, that made up for all. I never grumbled. I never envied other people after that. It seemed to me I had all I deserved—and so much, much more than many! Afterwards, when I woke up without him that day in Switzerland, there was only one thing that made it endurable. I overheard the Swiss doctor say to my maid—he was a kind old man and very sorry for me—that my own health was so fragile that I shouldn't live long to pine for the child. But oh!—what we can bear and not die! I came back to my father, and for eight years I never slept without crying—without the ghost of the boy's head against my breast. Again and again I used to wake up in an ecstasy, feeling it there—feeling the curls across my mouth."' A deep sob choked her. Lucy, in a madness of pity, struggled to release herself that she might throw her arms round the kneeling figure. But Eleanor's grasp only tightened. She hurried on.

'But last year, I began to hope. Everybody thought badly of me; the doctors spoke very strongly; and even Papa made no objection when Aunt Pattie asked me to come to Rome. I came to Rome in a strange state—as one looks at things and loves them, for the last time, before a journey. And then—well, then it all began!—new life for me, new health. The only happiness—except for the child—that had ever come my way. I know—oh! I don't deceive myself—I know it was not the same to Edward as to me. But I don't ask much. I knew he had given the best of his heart to other women—long ago—long before this. But the old loves were all dead, and I could almost be thankful for them. They had kept him for me, I thought,—tamed and exhausted him, so that I—so colourless and weak compared to those others!—might just slip into his heart and find the way open—that he might just take me in, and be glad, for sheer weariness.'

She dropped Lucy's hands, and rising, she locked her own, and began to walk to and fro in the great room; her head thrown back, her senses turned as it were inward upon the sights and sounds of memory.

Lucy gazed upon her in bewilderment. Then she too rose and approached Mrs.
Burgoyne.

'When shall I go?' she said simply. 'You must help me to arrange it with
Miss Manisty. It might be to-morrow—it would be easy to find some excuse.'

Eleanor looked at her with a convulsed face.

'That would help nothing,' she said—'nothing! He would guess what I had done.'

Lucy was silent a moment. Then she broke out piteously.

'What can I do?'

'What claim have I that you should do anything?' said Eleanor despairingly.
'I don't know what I wanted, when I began this scene.'

She moved on, her eyes bent upon the ground—Lucy beside her.

The girl had drawn Mrs. Burgoyne's arm through her own. The tears were on her cheek, but she was thinking, and quite calm.

'I believe,' she said at last, in a voice that was almost steady—'that all your fears are quite, quite vain. Mr. Manisty feels for me nothing but a little kindness—he could feel nothing else. It will all come back to you—and it was not I that took it away. But—whatever you tell me—whatever you ask, I will do.'

With a catching breath Eleanor turned and threw her arm round the girl's neck.

'Stay,' she breathed—'stay for a few days. Let there be no shock—nothing to challenge him. Then slip away—don't let him know where—and there is one woman in the world who will hold you in her inmost heart, who will pray for you with her secretest, sacredest prayers, as long as you live!'

The two fell into each other's embrace. Lucy, with the maternal tenderness that should have been Eleanor's, pressed her lips on the hot brow that lay upon her breast, murmuring words of promise, of consolation, of self-reproach, feeling her whole being passing out to Eleanor's in a great tide of passionate will and pity.