For Torre Amiata had been forgotten, while Lucy's momentary whim had furnished the clue which had sent him on his vain quest through the mountains.
* * * * *
'I do think '—said Lucy, presently, taking Eleanor's hand,—'you haven't coughed so much to-day?'
Her tone was full of anxiety, of tenderness.
Eleanor smiled. 'I am very well,' she said, dryly. But Lucy's frown did not relax. This cough was a new trouble. Eleanor made light of it. But Marie sometimes spoke of it to Lucy with expressions which terrified one who had never known illness except in her mother.
Meanwhile Eleanor was thinking—'Something will bring him here. He is writing to Father Benecke—Father Benecke to him. Some accident will happen—any day, any hour. Well—let him come!'
Her hands stiffened under her shawl that Lucy had thrown round her. A fierce consciousness of power thrilled through her weak frame. Lucy was hers! The pitiful spectacle of these six weeks had done its work. Let him come.
His letter was not unhappy!—far from it. She felt herself flooded with bitterness as she remembered the ardour that it breathed; the ardour of a lover to whom effort and pursuit are joys only second to the joys of possession.
But some day no doubt he would be unhappy—in earnest; if her will held.
But it would hold.
After all, it was not much she asked. She might live till the winter; possibly a year. Not long, after all, in Lucy's life or Manisty's. Let them only wait a little.