"Signore, if I were ever to go to America you may be sure I should take Maddalena with me."

"I think you would," Artois said, still looking at the man full in the eyes. "I think it would be wiser to take Maddalena with you."

Salvatore looked away.

"If I had the money, signore, I would buy the tickets to-morrow. Here I can make nothing, and it is a hard life, always on the sea. And in America you get good pay. A man can earn eight lire a day there, they tell me."

"I have not seen your daughter yet," Artois said, abruptly.

"No, signore, she is not well to-day. And the Signor Pretore frightened her. She will stay in the house to-day."

"But I should like to see her for a moment."

"Signore, I am very sorry, but--"

Artois turned round in the chair and looked towards the house. The door, which had been open, was now shut.

"Maddalena is praying, signore. She is praying to the Madonna for the soul of the dead signore."

For the first time Artois noticed in the hard, bird-like face of the fisherman a sign of emotion, almost of softness.

"We must not disturb her, signore."

Artois got up and went a few steps nearer to the cottage.

"Can one see the place where the signore's body was found?" he asked.

"Si, signore, from the other side, among the trees."

"I will come back in a moment," said Artois.

He walked away from the fisherman and entered the wood, circling the cottage. The fisherman did not come with him. Artois's instinct had told him that the man would not care to come on such an errand. As Artois pa.s.sed at the back of the cottage he noticed an open window, and paused near it in the long gra.s.s. From within there came the sound of a woman's voice, murmuring. It was frequently interrupted by sobs. After a moment Artois went close to the window, and said, but without showing himself:

"Maddalena!"

The murmuring voice stopped.

"Maddalena!"

There was silence.

"Maddalena!" Artois said. "Are you listening?"

He heard a faint movement as if the woman within came nearer to the cas.e.m.e.nt.

"If you loved the dead signore, if you care for his memory, do not talk of your grief for him to others. Pray for him, and be silent for him. If you are silent the Holy Mother will hear your prayers."

As he said the last words Artois made his deep voice sound mysterious, mystical.

Then he went away softly among the thickly growing trees.

When he saw Salvatore again, still standing upon the plateau, he beckoned to him without coming into the open.

"Bring the boat round to the inlet," he said. "I will cross from there."

"Si, signore."

"And as we cross we can speak a little more about America."

The fisherman stared at him, with a faint smile that showed a gleam of sharp, white teeth.

"Si, signore--a little more about America."

XXV

A night and a day had pa.s.sed, and still Artois had not seen Hermione. The autopsy had been finished, and had revealed nothing to change the theory of Dr. Marini as to the determining cause of death. The English stranger had been crossing the dangerous wall of rock, probably in darkness, had fallen, been stunned upon the rocks in the sea beneath, and drowned before he recovered consciousness.

Gaspare said nothing. Salvatore held his peace and began his preparations for America. And Maddalena, if she wept, wept now in secret; if she prayed, prayed in the lonely house of the sirens, near the window which had so often given a star to the eyes that looked down from the terrace of the Casa del Prete.

There was gossip in Marechiaro, and the Pretore still preserved his air of faint suspicion. But that would probably soon vanish under the influence of the Cancelliere, with whom Artois had had some private conversation. The burial had been allowed, and very early in the morning of the day following that of Hermione's arrival at the hotel it took place from the hospital.

Few people knew the hour, and most were still asleep when the coffin was carried down the street, followed only by Hermione, and by Gaspare in a black, ready-made suit that had been bought in the village of Cattaro.

Hermione would not allow any one else to follow her dead, and as Maurice had been a Protestant there was no service. This shocked Gaspare, and added to his grief, till Hermione explained that her husband had been of a different religion from that of Sicily, a religion with different rites.

"But we can pray for him, Gaspare," she said. "He loved us, and perhaps he will know what we are doing."

The thought seemed to soothe the boy. He kneeled down by his padrona under the wall of the Campo Santo by which Protestants were buried, and whispered a pet.i.tion for the repose of the soul of his padrone. Into the gap of earth, where now the coffin lay, he had thrown roses from his father's little terreno near the village. His tears fell fast, and his prayer was scarcely more than a broken murmur of "Povero signorino--povero signorino--Dio ci mandi buon riposo in Paradiso."

Hermione could not pray although she was in the att.i.tude of supplication; but when she heard the words of Gaspare she murmured them too. "Buon riposo!" The sweet Sicilian good-night--she said it now in the stillness of the lonely dawn. And her tears fell fast with those of the boy who had loved and served his master.

When the funeral was over she walked up the mountain with Gaspare to the Casa del Prete, and from there, on the following day, she sent a message to Artois, asking him if he would come to see her.

"I don't ask you to forgive me for not seeing you before," she wrote. "We understand each other and do not need explanations. I wanted to see n.o.body. Come at any hour when you feel that you would like to.

HERMIONE."

Artois rode up in the cool of the day, towards evening.

He was met upon the terrace by Gaspare.

"The signora is on the mountain, signore," he said. "If you go up you will find her, the povero signora. She is all alone upon the mountain."

"I will go, Gaspare. I have told Maddalena. I think she will be silent."

The boy dropped his eyes. His unreserve of the island had not endured. It had been a momentary impulse, and now the impulse had died away.

"Va bene, signore," he muttered.