* * * * *
Like her own lark on the wing, she has dropped this song to earth, unknowing and unheeding where its beauty shall alight; it is the impulse of her glad sweet heart to carol out its joy—no more. She is passing the great house of the First Happy One, so soon rejected in her game of make-believe! If now she could know what part the dream-Pippa might have taken on herself. . . . But she does not know, and, lingering for a moment by the step, she bends to pick a pansy-blossom.
The pair in the shrub-house have been arrested in full tide of passion by her song. It strikes on Sebald with the force of a warning from above—
"God's in his heaven! Do you hear that? Who spoke?
You, you spoke!"—
but she, contemptuously—
". . . Oh, that little ragged girl!
She must have rested on the step: we give them
But this one holiday the whole year round.
Did you ever see our silk-mills—their inside?
There are ten silk-mills now belong to you!"
Enervated by the interruption, she calls sharply to the singer to be quiet—but Pippa does not hear, and Ottima then orders Sebald to call, for his voice will be sure to carry.
No: her hour is past. He is ruled now by that voice from heaven. Terribly he turns upon her—
"Go, get your clothes on—dress those shoulders!
. . . Wipe off that paint! I hate you"—
and as she flashes back her "Miserable!" his hideous repulse sinks to a yet more hideous contemplation of her—