"Gaspare!" Maurice said to him.

He held out his hand and grasped the boy's hot hand.

"I sha'n't forget your faithful service," he said. "Thank you, Gaspare."

He wanted to say more, to find other and far different words. But he could not.

"Let me come with you, signorino."

The boy's voice was intensely, almost savagely, earnest.

"No. You must stay with the signora."

"I want to come with you."

His great eyes were fastened on his padrone's face.

"I have always been with you."

"But you were with the signora first. You were her servant. You must stay with her now. Remember one thing, Gaspare--the signora is never to know."

The boy nodded. His eyes still held Maurice. They glittered as if with leaping fires. That deep and pa.s.sionate spirit of Sicilian loyalty, which is almost savage in its intensity and heedless of danger, which is ready to go to h.e.l.l with, or for, a friend or a master who is beloved and believed in, was awake in Gaspare, illuminated him at this moment. The peasant boy looked n.o.ble.

"Mayn't I come with you, signorino?"

"Gaspare," Maurice said, "I must leave some one with the padrona.

Salvatore might come still. I may miss him going down. Whom can I trust to stop Salvatore, if he comes, but you? You see?"

"Va bene, signorino."

The boy seemed convinced, but he suffered and did not try to conceal it.

"Now I must go," Maurice said.

He shook Gaspare's hand.

"Have you got the revolver, signorino?" said the boy.

"No. I am not going to fight with Salvatore."

"How do you know what Salvatore will do?"

Maurice looked down upon the stones that lay on the narrow path.

"My revolver can have nothing to do with Maddalena's father," he said.

He sighed.

"That's how it is, Gaspare. Addio!"

"Addio, signorino."

Maurice went on down the path into the shadow of the trees. Presently he turned. Gaspare stood quite still, looking after him.

"Signorino!" he called. "May I not come? I want to come with you."

Maurice waved his hand towards the mountain-side.

"Go to the signora," he called back. "And look out for me to-night.

Addio, Gaspare!"

The boy's "Addio!" came to him sadly through the gathering shadows of the evening.

Presently Hermione, who was sitting alone on the terrace with a book in her lap which she was not reading, saw Gaspare walking listlessly through the archway holding his gun. He came slowly towards her, lifted his hat, and was going on without a word, but she stopped him.

"Why, Gaspare," she said, lightly, "you forgot us to-day. How was that?"

"Signora?"

Again she saw the curious, almost ugly, look of obstinacy, which she had already noticed, come into his face.

"You didn't remember about tea-time!"

"Signora," he answered, "I am sorry."

He looked at her fixedly while he spoke.

"I am sorry," he said again.

"Never mind," Hermione said, unable to blame him on this first day of her return. "I dare say you have got out of regular habits while I've been away. What have you been doing all the time?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Niente."

Again she wondered what was the matter with the boy to-day. Where were his life and gayety? Where was his sense of fun? He used to be always joking, singing. But now he was serious, almost heavy in demeanor.

"Gaspare," she said, jokingly, "I think you've all become very solemn without me. I am the old person of the party, but I begin to believe that it is I who keep you lively. I mustn't go away again."

"No, signora," he answered, earnestly; "you must never go away from us again. You should never have gone away from us."

The deep solemnity of his great eyes startled her. He put on his hat and went away round the angle of the cottage.

"What can be the matter with him?" she thought.

She remained sitting there on the terrace, wondering. Now she thought over things quietly, it struck her as strange the fact that she had left behind her in the priest's house three light-hearted people, and had come back to find Lucrezia drowned in sorrow, Gaspare solemn, even mysterious in his manner, and her husband--but here her thoughts paused, not labelling Maurice. At first he had puzzled her the most. But she thought she had found reasons for the change--a pa.s.sing one, she felt sure--in him. He had secretly resented her absence, and, though utterly free from any ign.o.ble suspicion of her, he had felt boyishly jealous of her friendship with Emile. That was very natural. For this was their honeymoon. She considered it their honeymoon prolonged, delightfully prolonged, beyond any fashionable limit. Lucrezia's depression was easily comprehensible. The change in her husband she accounted for; but now here was Gaspare looking dismal!

"I must cheer them all up," she thought to herself. "This beautiful time mustn't end dismally."