Riccabocca, bending, wrapped the cloak round his guest, kissed him on the forehead, and crept out of the room to rejoin Jemima, who still sat up for him, nervously anxious to learn from him those explanations which her considerate affection would not allow her to ask from the agitated and exhausted Violante. “Not in bed!” cried the sage, on seeing her. “Have you no feelings of compassion for my son that is to be? Just, too, when there is a reasonable probability that we can afford a son?”
Riccabocca here laughed merrily, and his wife threw herself on his shoulder, and cried for joy.
But no sleep fell on the lids of Harley L’Estrange. He started up when his host had left him, and paced the apartment, with noiseless but rapid strides. All whim and levity had vanished from his face, which, by the light of the dawn, seemed death-like pale. On that pale face there was all the struggle and all the anguish of passion.
“These arms have clasped her,” he murmured; “these lips have inhaled her breath! I am under the same roof, and she is saved,—saved evermore from danger and from penury, and forever divided from me. Courage, courage! Oh, honour, duty; and thou, dark memory of the past,—thou that didst pledge love at least to a grave,—support, defend me! Can I be so weak!”
The sun was in the wintry skies when Harley stole from the house. No one was stirring except Giacomo, who stood by the threshold of the door, which he had just unbarred, feeding the house-dog. “Good-day,” said the servant, smiling. “The dog has not been of much use, but I don’t think the padrone will henceforth grudge him a breakfast. I shall take him to Italy, and marry him there, in the hope of improving the breed of our native Lombard dogs.”
“Ah,” said Harley, “you will soon leave our cold shores. May sunshine settle on you all!” He paused, and looked up at the closed windows wistfully.
“The signorina sleeps there,” said Giacomo, in a husky voice, “just over the room in which you slept.”
“I knew it,” muttered Harley. “An instinct told me of it. Open the gate; I must go home. My excuses to your lord, and to all.”
He turned a deaf ear to Giacomo’s entreaties to stay till at least the signorina was up,—the signorina whom he had saved. Without trusting himself to speak further, he quitted the demesne, and walked with swift strides towards London.