With that sun-ray upon his face, Nobili seemed to her, at that moment, more than mortal!
"Angel!" exclaimed Count Nobili, wrought up to sudden passion, "can you doubt me?"
Before Enrica could reply, a snake, warmed by the hot sun, curled upward from the terraced wall behind them, where it had basked, and glided swiftly between them. Nobili's heel was on it; in an instant he had crushed its head. But there between them lay the quivering reptile, its speckled scales catching the light. Enrica shrieked and started back.
"O God! what an evil omen!" She said no more, only her shifting color and uneasy eyes told what she felt.
"An evil omen, love!" and Nobili brushed away the snake with his foot into the underwood, and laughed. "Not so. It is an omen that I shall crush all who would part us. That is how I read it."
Enrica shook her head. That snake crawling between them was the first warning to her that she was still on earth. Till then it had seemed to her that Nobili's presence must be like paradise. Now for a moment a terrible doubt crept over her. Could happiness be sad? It must be so, for now she could not tell whether she was sad or happy.
"Oh! do not say too much, dear Nobili," she repeated almost to herself, "or—" Her voice dropped. She looked toward the spot where the snake had fallen, and shuddered.
Nobili did not then reply, but, taking Enrica by the hand, he led her up a flight of steps to a higher terrace, where a cypress avenue threw long shadows across the marble pavement.
"You are mine," he whispered, "mine—as by a miracle!"
There was such rapture in his voice that heaven came down into her heart, and every doubt was stilled.