As he had talked, sometimes to them, and then as if to himself, to her imagination all the space about and above had become filled with watching faces. There were pale brows over eyes grown dim and hollow with fruitless study; there were clustering locks that wore the shadow of a crown; there were dreamy faces whose eyes were filled with visions of the golden streets of the New Jerusalem; there were the hungry cheeks and devouring eyes of poverty; there was avarice with human features; and over the shoulders of these, and peering through their floating hair or widespread beard, were impish eyes and glimpses of impish mirth; all which, with sudden explosion, were wrapped one moment in flame, and the next, fell in a mass of gold like a mountain, writhing one instant, then fixed. And in the place where they had been remained unscathed one face still gazing in a dream at the golden streets of the New Jerusalem.
The childish vision rose and fell; but it left a scene almost as unreal.
There showed no more sparkling points in the trough, and Iona changed it for the other, glancing into the second as she withdrew it. At the bottom of the net was a spark like a star. It was a little ball of gold that the water had brought while she was searching. She smiled at sight of it, scarcely knowing why it pleased her; and instead of putting it into the wallet, found a dew-softened flake of lichen to wrap it in, and hid it in her bosom.
“I will ask Dylar if I may give it to Ion when he goes out,” she thought; and the image of Ion warmed her heart. “Dear boy!” she murmured.
The dew, the darkness, and the silence soothed her as she walked homeward. Seen from a distance she might have seemed a glow-worm creeping along the face of the rock. Her lamp grew dim, and she lighted her taper again by its expiring flame, and went on uncoiling it as it rapidly consumed in the faint breeze of her motion.
Weary, and in some way comforted, she reached the castle and her chamber, and was soon asleep.
But anguish woke with her, the stronger for its repose. The novelty of the change was gone, and a consuming fever of impatience to return to San Salvador took possession of her. But she had come for a week, and she stayed a week, passing such days and nights as made her cheeks thin and her eyes hollow.
The morning she had set for her return she was scarcely able to rise; but at noon she reached the Pines, and while everybody in San Salvador was at supper, she quietly entered the Arcade, and sent for Elena to come to her room.
“Give these to Dylar with your own hand,” she said, consigning to her care the wallet and the case of keys. “And please send me some supper here. I am going up the hills this evening, and may stay all day to-morrow. Whoever comes with my food can set the basket on the terrace, if I am not in sight.”
Elena looked at that worn face, and could not restrain an expostulation.