At this point Luisa entered.
"Yes, dear," said Ester, laughing. "He is telling me a story."
"Oh, tell it to me also! To me also!"
A muffled peal of thunder resounded. "Go, Maria dear," said Ester. "Go to your room and pray the Lord not to send a terrible thunderstorm or hail."
"Oh, yes, yes! I will pray to the Lord!"
The little one went out, and entered the alcove-room, serious and dignified, as if in that moment the safety of the whole Valsolda depended upon her prayer. Prayer to her was always a solemn matter; it was a point of contact with mystery which always made her assume a grave and attentive air, as did also certain tales of enchantment and magic. She mounted a chair and said the few prayers she knew, and then assumed the attitude she had seen the most pious women of town assume in church, and began moving her lips as they did, repeating a wordless prayer. Seeing her thus one acquainted with the terrible secret of the next hour would have felt that the guardian angel of little children was standing beside her at that moment, and admonishing her to pray for something besides the vineyards and olive-groves of Valsolda, for something nearer to her, something the angel did not name, and she neither knew nor could put into words. The onlooker would have felt also that in these, her inarticulate whisperings, there was an element of occult tenderness, and tragedy, the docile surrender of a sweet soul to the admonitions of its guardian angel, to the mysterious will of God.
At half-past two the great lowering clouds above Carona belched forth another peal of thunder, to which the other great clouds above Boglia and the Zocca d'i Ment immediately responded. Luisa ran out to the terrace. The gondola was opposite S. Mamette, and was making straight for the Calcinera. She could see quite plainly that the boatmen were pulling hard. As Luisa laid aside the telescope the first gust of wind swept through the loggia, banging doors and windows. Terrified by a feeling that she would be too late, she hastily closed both doors and windows, passed swiftly through the hall, seized an umbrella and went out, without telling any one she was going, and without closing the house-door behind her. She started towards Albogasio Inferiore. Just beyond the cemetery, on the spot they call Mainè, she met Ismaele.
"Where are you going in such weather, Signora Luisa?"
She answered that she was going to Albogasio, and passed on. When she had gone about a hundred paces she remembered that she had not let Veronica know she was going out, that she had not told her to close the windows in the bedrooms, and look after Maria. She might send word by Ismaele. But he had already disappeared round the corner of the cemetery. In her heart she felt an impulse to go back, but there was not time. The rumbling of the thunder was continuous; great, infrequent drops were striking here and there on the maize; gusts of wind swept at intervals through the mulberry-trees, forerunners of the whirlwind of the Caronasco. Luisa opened her umbrella and hastened forward.
A furious downpour overtook her in the dark lanes of Albogasio. But she never thought of taking refuge in a doorway, and pushed on undaunted. She met a troop of children who were running away from the rain, after waiting in vain on the church-place of the Annunciata for the passing of the Marchesa in the litter. While she was crossing the short space between the town-hall of Albogasio and the church, the wind turned her umbrella inside out. She began to run, and reached the strip of ground behind the church that overlooks the path leading down to the Calcinera. There, protected by the church from the driving rain, she righted her umbrella as best she could, and looked over the parapet.