“I see. It is the lord of many joints who is the lord of creation. And yet there is a virtue in blood. It can produce superior beauty as well as superior men.”
“Wherefore the basil, signore, whose appetite, like the human, grows fiercer with what it feeds on, till nothing but the blood of men will appease it.”
“Come, Aquaviva!”
“So it is said, signore—of murdered men.”
“Is that what your aristocrats here are delaying for?”
“O! they are young; their tastes are not formed; but I daresay a dose of it would facilitate their blossoming.”
Tiretta watched a little longer in silence, then turned and strolled away. It had been on his lips humorously to repeat a former challenge, to see if even that would succeed in evoking a response from a suddenly stimulated memory; but something had prevented him at the last—a quick-springing emotion which urged him into search of solitude for its indulgence.
Inevitably his steps led him towards the orange-grove. They were never long from wandering in that direction—and not only because of the magical associations of the place. Elsewhere the gardens were but lately rising and expanding from their sober winter levels, and they afforded as yet but little cover for a would-be solitary spirit. But, for “a green thought in a green shade” there was always the hushed welcome of this deep windless sanctuary, and it was therein that he looked to find a solution of the perplexities that beset his present condition. He knew very well what form that expectancy conjured up; it could not be but one in a spot so haunted. Here, if anywhere, he felt, the end would be decided.
The place was luminous now with young vivid gold and emerald; no sound broke its silences save the running footsteps of the little river beyond, whose unseen glitter seemed actually vocal, splintering the misty limits of the grove as with spars and points of iridescent laughter. Tiretta, entering but a little way into that enchanted solitude, stopped abruptly, and gave rein to the thought he had brought in with him.
Could it be that death waited on their reunion? He had only jested at the superstition on a former occasion: somehow now he did not feel inclined to jest at it. This pretty basil thing, which they had elected and consecrated for the symbol of their happiness! Its flowering was to be the sign; and when was it to flower? Not yet, nor remotely, if it was to be judged by these others; not even so soon as they, if Aquaviva had prophesied aright. And yet they had reached a crisis, whose solution, it seemed, must be a matter of days—of moments. The duke, if not arrived at Colorno already, was hourly expected. Why did she not come?