'Maso! look here!' said Lucy, addressing a small boy, who with his brother was driving some goats along the road.

She took from a basket on her arm, first some pasticceria, then a square of chocolate, lastly a handful of soldi.

'You know the casetta by the river where Mamma Brigitta lives?'

'Yes.' The boy looked at her with his sharp stealthy eyes.

'Take down this letter to Mamma Brigitta. If you wait a little, she'll give you another letter in exchange, and if you bring it up to me, you shall have all those!'

And she spread out her bribes.

The boys' faces were sulky. The house by the river was unpopular, owing to its tenant. But the temptation was of a devilish force. They took the letter and scampered down the hill driving their goats before them.

Lucy also walked down some three or four of the innumerable zig-zags of the road. Presently she found a rocky knoll to the left of it. A gap in the trees opened a vision of the Amiata range, radiantly blue under a superb sky, a few shreds of moving mist still wrapped about its topmost peaks. She took her seat upon a moss-covered stone facing the road which mounted towards her. But some bushes of tall heath and straggling arbutus made a light screen in front of her. She saw, but she could hardly be seen, till the passer-by coming from the river was close upon her.

She sat there with her hands lightly crossed upon her knees, holding herself a little stiffly—waiting.

The phrases of her letter ran in her head. It had been short and simple.—'Dear Father Benecke,—I have reason to know that Mr. Manisty is here—is indeed staying with you. Mrs. Burgoyne is not aware of it and I am anxious that she should not be told. She wishes—as I think she made clear to you—to be quite alone here, and if she desired to see her cousins she would of course have written to them herself. She is too ill to be startled or troubled in any way. Will you do us a great kindness? Will you persuade Mr. Manisty to go quietly away without letting Mrs. Burgoyne know that he has been here? Please ask him to tell Miss Manisty that we shall not be here much longer, that we have a good doctor, and that as Torre Amiata is on the hills the heat is not often oppressive.'

… The minutes passed away. Presently her thoughts began to escape the control she had put upon them; and she felt herself yielding to a sense of excitement. She resolutely took a book of Italian stories from the bottom of her basket, and began to read.

At last! the patter of the goats and the shouts of the boys.

They rushed upon her with the letter. She handed over their reward and broke the seal.

'Hochgeerhrtes FrÄulein,—

'It is true that Mr. Manisty is here. I too am most anxious that Mrs. Burgoyne should not be startled or disturbed. But I distrust my own diplomacy; nor have I yet mentioned your presence here to my guest. I am not at liberty to do so, having given my promise to Mrs. Burgoyne. Will you not see and speak to Mr. Manisty yourself? He talks of going up this morning to see the old convent. I cannot prevent him, without betraying what I have no right to betray. At present he is smoking in my garden. But his carriage is ordered from Selvapendente two hours hence. If he does go up the hill, it would surely be easy for you to intercept him. If not, you may he sure that he has left for Orvieto.'

Lucy read the letter with a flush and a frown. It struck her that it was not quite simple; that the priest knew more, and was more concerned in the new turn of events than he avowed.

She was well aware that he and Eleanor had had much conversation; that Eleanor was still possessed by the same morbid forces of grief and anger which, at the villa, had broken down all her natural reticence and self-control. Was it possible—?

Her cheek flamed. She felt none of that spell in the priestly office which affected Eleanor. The mere bare notion of being 'managed' by this kind old priest was enough to rouse all her young spirit and defiance.

But the danger was imminent. She saw what she must do, and prepared herself to do it—simply, without any further struggle.

The little goatherds left her, munching their cakes and looking back at her from time to time in a childish curiosity. The pretty blue lady had seated herself again as they had found her—a few paces from the roadside, under the thick shadow of an oak.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Manisty was rejoined by Father Benecke—who had left him for a few minutes to write his letter—beside the Paglia, which was rushing down in a brown flood, after the rain of the day before. Around and above them, on either side of the river, and far up the flanks of the mountains opposite, stretched the great oak woods, which are still to-day the lineal progeny of that vast Ciminian forest where lurked the earliest enemies of Rome.

'But for the sun, it might be Wales!' said Manisty, looking round him, as he took out another cigarette.

Father Benecke made no reply. He sat on a rock by the water's side, in what seemed to be a reverie. His fine white head was uncovered. His attitude was gentle, dignified, abstracted.

'It is a marvellous country this!' Manisty resumed. 'I thought I knew it pretty well. But the last five weeks have given one's mind a new hold upon it. The forests have been wasted—but by George!—what forests there are still!—and what a superb mountain region, half of which is only known to a few peasants and shepherds. What rivers—what fertility—what a climate! And the industry of the people. Catch a few English farmers and set them to do what the Italian peasant does, year in and year out, without a murmur! Look at all the coast south of Naples. There is not a yard of it, scarcely, that hasn't been made by human hands. Look at the hill-towns; and think of the human toil that has gone to the making and maintaining of them since the world began.'

And swaying backwards and forwards he fell into the golden lines:

Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem,
Tot congesta manu prÆruptis oppida saxis,
Fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros.

'Congesta manu! Ecco!—there they are'—and he pointed down the river to the three or four distant towns, each on its mountain spur, that held the valley between them and Orvieto—pale jewels on the purple robe of rock and wood.

'So Virgil saw them. So the latest sons of time shall see them—the homes of a race that we chatter about without understanding—the most laborious race in the wide world.'

And again he rolled out under his breath, for the sheer joy of the verse:

Salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus,
Magna virÛm.

The priest looked at him with a smile; preoccupied yet shrewd.

'I follow you with some astonishment. Surely—I remember other sentiments on your part?'

Manisty coloured a little, and shook his black head, protesting.

'I never said uncivil things, that I remember, about Italy or the Italians as such. My quarrel was with the men that run them, the governments that exploit them. My point was that Piedmont and the North had been too greedy, had laid hands too rapidly on the South and had risked this damnable quarrel with the Church, without knowing what they were running their heads into. And in consequence they found themselves—in spite of rivers of corrupt expenditure—without men, or money, or credit to work their big new machine with; while the Church was always there, stronger than ever for the grievance they had presented her with, and turned into an enemy with whom it was no longer possible to parley. Well!—that struck me as a good object lesson. I wanted to say to the secularising folk everywhere—England included—just come here, and look what your policy comes to, when it's carried out to the bitter end, and not in the gingerly, tinkering fashion you affect at home! Just understand what it means to separate Church from State, to dig a gulf between the religious and the civil life.—Here's a country where nobody can be at once a patriot and a good Christian—where the Catholics don't vote for Parliament, and the State schools teach no religion—where the nation is divided into two vast camps, hating and thrusting at each other with every weapon they can tear from life. Examine it! That's what the thing looks like when it's full grown. Is it profitable—does it make for good times? In your own small degree, are you going to drive England that way too?—You'll admit, Father—you always did admit—that it was a good theme.'

The priest smiled—a little sadly.

'Excellent. Only—you seemed to me—a little irresponsible.'

Manisty nodded, and laughed.

'An outsider, with no stakes on? Well—that's true. But being a Romantic and an artist I sided with the Church. The new machine, and the men that were running it, seemed to me an ugly jerry-built affair, compared with the Papacy and all that it stood for. But then—'

—He leant back in his chair, one hand snatching and tearing at the bushes round him, in his absent, destructive way.—

'Well then—as usual—facts began to play the mischief with one's ideas. In the first place, as one lives on in Italy you discover the antiquity of this quarrel; that it is only the Guelf and Ghibelline quarrel over again, under new names. And in the next—presently one begins to divine an Italy behind the Italy we know, or history knows!—Voices come to one, as Goethe would say, from the caves where dwell "Die MÜtter"—the creative generative forces of the country.'—

He turned his flashing look on Benecke, pleased now as always with the mere task of speech.

'Anyway, as I have been going up and down their country, especially during the last six weeks; prating about their poverty, and their taxes, their corruption, the incompetence of their leaders, the folly of their quarrel with the Church; I have been finding myself caught in the grip of things older and deeper—incredibly, primevally old!—that still dominate everything, shape everything here. There are forces in Italy, forces of land and soil and race—only now fully let loose—that will remake Church no less than State, as the generations go by. Sometimes I have felt as though this country were the youngest in Europe; with a future as fresh and teeming as the future of America. And yet one thinks of it at other times as one vast graveyard; so thick it is with the ashes and the bones of men! The Pope—and Crispi!—waves, both of them, on a sea of life that gave them birth, "with equal mind"; and that with equal mind will sweep them both to its own goal—not theirs.'

He smiled at his own eloquence, and returned to his cigarette.

The priest had listened to him all through with the same subtle embarrassed look.

'This must have some cause,' he said slowly, when Manisty ceased to speak. 'Surely?—this change? I recall language so different—forecasts so gloomy.'

'Gracious!—I can give you books-full of them,' said Manisty, reddening, 'if you care to read them. I came out with a parti-pris—I don't deny it. Catholicism had a great glamour for me; it has still, so long as you don't ask me to put my own neck under the yoke! But Rome itself is disenchanting. And outside Rome!—During the last six weeks I have been talking to every priest I could come across in these remote country districts where I have been wandering. Per Dio!—Marcello used to talk—I didn't believe him. But upon my word, the young fellows whom the seminaries are now sending out in shoals represent a fact to give one pause!—Little black devils!—Scusi! Father,—the word escaped me. Broadly speaking, they are a political militia,—little else. Their hatred of Italy is a venom in their bones, and they themselves are mad for a spiritual tyranny which no modern State could tolerate for a week. When one thinks of the older men—of Rosmini, of Gioberti, of the priests who died on the Milan barricades in '48!'

His companion made a slow movement of assent.

Manisty smoked on, till presently he launched the mot for which he had been feeling. 'The truth of the matter seems to be that Italy is Catholic, because she hasn't faith enough to make a heresy; and anti-clerical, because it is her destiny to be a nation!'

The priest smiled, but with a certain languor, turning his head once or twice as though to listen for sounds behind him, and taking out his watch. His eyes meanwhile—and their observation of Manisty—were not languid; seldom had the mild and spiritual face been so personal, so keen.

'Well, it is a great game,' said Manisty again—'and we shan't see the end.
Tell me—how have they treated you—the priests in these parts?'

Benecke started and shrank.

'I have no complaint to make,' he said mildly. 'They seem to me good men.'

Manisty smoked in silence.

Then he said, as though summing up his own thoughts,—

'No,—there are plenty of dangers ahead. This war has shaken the Sabaudisti—for the moment. Socialism is serious.—Sicily is serious.—The economic difficulties are serious.—The House of Savoy will have a rough task, perhaps, to ride the seas that may come.—But Italy is safe. You can no more undo what has been done than you can replace the child in the womb. The birth is over. The organism is still weak, but it lives. And the forces behind it are indefinitely, mysteriously stronger than the Vatican thinks.'

'A great recantation,' said the priest quickly.

Manisty winced, but for a while said nothing. All at once he jerked away his cigarette.

'Do you suspect some other reason for it, than the force of evidence?'—he said, in another manner.

The priest, smiling, looked him full in the face without replying.

'You may,' said Manisty, coolly. 'I shan't play the hypocrite. Father, I told you that I had been wandering about Italy on a quest that was not health, nor piety, nor archÆology. How much did you guess?'

'Naturally, something—lieber Herr.'

'Do you know that I should have been at Torre Amiata weeks ago but for you?'

'For me! You talk in riddles.'

'Very simple. Your letters might have contained a piece of news—and did not. Yet if it had been there to give, you would have given it. So I crossed Torre Amiata off my list. No need to go there! I said to myself.'

The priest was silent.

Manisty looked up. His eyes sparkled; his lips trembled as though they could hardly bring themselves to launch the words behind them.

'Father—you remember a girl—at the Villa?'

The priest made a sign of assent.

'Well—I have been through Italy—with that girl's voice in my ears—and, as it were, her eyes rather than my own. I have been searching for her for weeks. She has hidden herself from me. But I shall find her!—now or later—here or elsewhere.'

'And then?'

'Well, then,—I shall know some "eventful living"!'

He drew a long breath.

'And you hope for success?'

'Hope?' said Manisty, passionately. 'I live on something more nourishing than that!'

The priest lifted his eyebrows.

'You are so certain?'

'I must be certain'—said Manisty, in a low voice,—'or in torment! I prefer the certainty.'

His face darkened. In its frowning disorganisation his companion saw for the first time a man hitherto unknown to him, a man who spoke with the dignity, the concentration, the simplicity of true passion.

Dignity! The priest recalled the voice, the looks of Eleanor Burgoyne. Not a word for her—not a thought! His old heart began to shrink from his visitor, from his own scheme.

'Then how do you explain the young lady's disappearance?' he asked, after a pause.

Manisty laughed. But the note was bitter.

'Father!—I shall make her explain it herself.'

'She is not alone?'

'No—my cousin Mrs. Burgoyne is with her.'

Benecke observed him, appreciated the stiffening of the massive shoulders.

'I heard from some friends in Rome,' said the priest, after a moment—'distressing accounts of Mrs. Burgoyne's health.'

Manisty's look was vague and irresponsive.

'She was always delicate,' he said abruptly,—not kindly.

'What makes you look for them in Italy?'

'Various causes. They would think themselves better hidden from their English friends, in Italy than elsewhere, at this time of year. Beside, I remember one or two indications—'

There was a short silence. Then Manisty sprang up.

'How long, did you say, before the trap came? An hour and a half?'

'Hardly,' said the priest, unwillingly, as he drew out his watch.—'And you must give yourself three hours to Orvieto—'

'Time enough. I'll go and have a look at those frescoes again—and a chat with the woman. Don't interrupt yourself. I shall be back in half an hour.'

'Unfortunately I must write a letter,' said the priest.

And he stood at the door of his little bandbox of a house, watching the departure of his guest.

Manisty breasted the hill, humming as he walked. The irregular vigorous form, the nobility and animation of his carriage drew the gaze of the priest after him.

'At what point'—he said to himself,—'will he find her?'