"All rests with you, Amanda, if you do not despise me too deeply. If you love me, then the madman can do nothing to you, and some day matters will happily mend for us. At present I am like one in a prison cell. I cannot move to release myself. But this I know: if you will not help me to escape from the toils I shall die. Amanda, give me a word, a sign. It is too perilous to write; indeed, I know not how I shall convey these lines to your hands. At any rate, do not you attempt to send a letter to me. He might be on our traces even now.
"But to-morrow is the day of the fête. Be there in the neighbourhood of the band, and stay till I find you. Then, no words, but speak to me only with your eyes. If they are friendly I shall know enough. Ah, Amanda, all will come right if you are mine. My own, my Amanda.
"Till death,
"Your unhappy cousin,
"Luigi."
No sooner had Amanda read this letter than she felt that she loved Luigi. Never before had she so much as hinted to herself a thought of this, but now she loved him with all her soul. She had no doubt on that point.
As to what Mansana had said about him, that might be based on a misunderstanding; and as to the promise Luigi had given, that, she thought, was obviously a matter of no importance. Young girls do not take a pledge of this kind au pied de la lettre, when it seems to them unreasonable. Besides, Mansana had left the place.
So the next day came—the day of the fête. It was a fine warm autumn morning, and Amanda was up and ready betimes. The bands of music had marched through the streets at sunrise, and the cannon had thundered a salute. The churches, decorated outside as well as within, were crowded for the early service, and our little Amanda was there by her father's side, tricked out in her best holiday finery. She offered up a prayer for Luigi, and as she rose from her knees she practised her lips in a smile, the friendly smile and deeply confiding glance that should bring hope and comfort to her distressed adorer. After the procession and the mid-day meal, she hastened to take up her position at the appointed place. The band had already begun to play in the market square, but Amanda hurried her father's customarily sedate pace so much that they were enabled to find room among the very first arrivals, though with the natural result that after they had been standing there an hour they found themselves wedged in the thickest of the throng. She looked at her father's perspiring face, and thought mournfully how unattractive her own would look in Luigi's eyes. They must make their way out, cost what it might; that is, provided it did not cost a flower, or a knot of ribbon, or even a vigorous effort, which last would only have added to the embarrassing redness of her burning cheeks. So she made but little progress, and still grew hotter and hotter. She heard the roll of the big drums and the boom of the trombones through the roar of voices and laughter all round her. She saw the campanile of the town hall and the clapper that hung below the great bell, and these last objects were all she could discern above the billows of living humanity that surged about and over her. Her father's suffering visage warned her how flurried and unpresentable she must be growing, and the poor little thing began to cry.
But Luigi had also been one of the first to find his way to the neighbourhood of the bandstand, and as the square in front of the guildhall of the little town was by no means extensive, it came about in due course that these two, who were seeking one another through the eddying mass of spectators, at last stood face to face. He glanced at her, and saw the deep blush and smile that shone through her tears. The blush he took for one of joy, the tears he thought were those of sympathy with his trouble, and the smile he welcomed as an earnest of what was to come. To her father in his distress and anxiety Luigi seemed like a guardian angel, and he called to him hastily, "Help us to get out of this, Luigi;" and Luigi applied himself to the task with vigour. It was a matter of some difficulty, and once or twice both Amanda and her father were in actual danger, so that the young man felt that he was acting quite an heroic part. With arms and shoulders at work he protected them, and with his eyes fixed on Amanda's he hung on her long, timid gaze. But he spoke no word, so he had not violated his promise. The consciousness of all this gave him a proud satisfaction. His bearing might well be noble, and he knew from the approving reflection in Amanda's eyes that in fact it did seem so to her.
But happiness in this world is doomed to be transient. A quarter of an hour previously Giuseppe Mansana had marked Luigi in the crowd, and with the instinct of jealousy he had been watching him from a distance—an easy enough matter for one of his height. The other, in his restless search, had constantly pressed forward, and thus had no suspicion of the danger that threatened him from behind; and now he was so deeply absorbed in his work of rescue—or rather in seeing his own gallant image flashed back from Amanda's eyes—that he did not notice Mansana till the captain's vulturine visage was scowling close beside his own, and he could feel his hot breath on his cheek.