“Excellency, my tongue was busy indeed with complaint against myself when thus she spoke to me, for I knew that I had left her alone; and what cry of bitterness can go up to Heaven like the cry of a lonely child?
“‘Christine,’ said I, ‘they have done ill to you; yet remember that no more. Am I not come back to take you to the city, where new friends await you, and a new home?’
“‘To take me to the city—to Sebenico, Andrea?’ she answered, with astonishment in her eyes. ‘Why should you take me there?’
“‘That you may leave this vagrant’s life, and become what your father would have made you if life had been spared to him.’
“She thought upon it for a moment, and then she said:
“‘Nay, let me be where I am—it is well with me here, Andrea.’
“‘Well with you!’ I cried, for her ingratitude angered me, ‘well with you—to have no clothes upon your body; to run in the woods like a savage who knows not God; well with you to rot in such a kennel as this——’
“This I said, for my anger went near to choking me; but she heard me out in a savage silence, neither word nor gesture escaping her.
“‘I shall not go to Sebenico, Andrea,’ she answered very quietly, ‘until Ugo takes me there.’
“‘Until Ugo takes you there! And who, then, is Ugo that he should order and you should obey?’