He took his arm away brusquely and got up.
"I thought I would find you here," he remarked in an indifferent marital tone. "That man has gone now," he added.
With a deep sigh the maid of Madame de Montevesso struggled out of the depths of despondency, only to fall a prey to anxiety.
"Oh, Bernard, what did that man want with Miss Adèle?"
Bernard knew enough to have formed a conjecture that English fellow must have either left some papers or a message for the Marquis with Madame de Montevesso.
PART IV
I
In what seemed to him a very short time Cosmo found himself under the colonnade separating the town piled upon the hills from the flat ground of the waterside. A profound quietness reigned on the darkly polished surface of the harbour and the long, incurved range of the quays. This quietness that surrounded him on all sides through which, beyond the spars of clustered coasters, he could look at the night-horizon of the open sea, relieved that fantastic feeling of confinement within his own body with its intolerable tremors and shrinkings and imperious suggestions. Mere weaknesses all. His desire, however, to climb to the top of the tower, as if only there complete relief could be found for his captive spirit, was as strong as ever.
The only light on shore he could see issued in a dim streak from the door of the guardhouse which he had passed on his return from the tower on his first evening in Genoa. As he did not wish to pass near the Austrian sentry at the head of the landing-steps, Cosmo, instead of following the quay, kept under the portico at the back of the guardhouse. When he came to its end he had a view of the squat bulk of the tower across a considerable space of flat waste ground extending to the low rocks of the seashore. He made for it with the directness of a man possessed by a fixed idea. When he reached the iron-studded low door within the deep dark archway at the foot of the tower he found it immovable. Locked! How stupid! As if those heavy ship guns up there could be stolen! Disappointed, he leaned his shoulders against the side of the deep arch, lingering as people will before the finality of a closed door or of a situation without issue.
His superstitious mood had left him. An old picture was an old picture; and probably the face of that noble saint copied from an old triptych and of Madame de Montevesso were not at all alike. At most, a suggestion which may have been the doing of the copyist and so without meaning. A copyist is not an inspired person; not a seer of visions. He felt critical, almost ironic, towards the Cosmo of the morning, the Cosmo of the day, the Cosmo rushing away like a scared child from a fanciful resemblance, that probably did not even exist. What was he doing there? He might have asked the way to the public gardens. Lurking within the dark archway, muffled up in his blue cloak, he was a suspect figure like an ambushed spadassin waiting for his victim, or a conspirator hiding from the minions of a tyrant. "I am perfectly ridiculous," he thought. "I had better go back as soon as I can." This was his sudden conclusion, but he did not move. It struck him that he was not anxious to face his empty room. Was he ready to get into another panic? he asked himself scornfully. . . . At that moment he heard distinctly the sound of whispering as if through the wall, or from above or from the ground. He held his breath. The whispering went on, loquacious. When it stopped, another voice, as low but deeper and more distinct, muttered the words: "The hour is past."