'You will soon know,' she said almost with gaiety. 'Oh! it is quite possible'—she threw up one hand in a wild childish gesture—'it is quite possible that to-morrow I may be at your feet, asking you to give me penance for my rough words. On the other hand—Anyway, Father, you have not found me a very dutiful penitent?'
'I expected castigation,' he said meekly. 'If the castigation is done, I have come off better than I could have hoped.'
She raised herself, and took up her gloves that were lying on the little table beside her sofa.
'You see'—she said, talking very fast—'I am an Englishwoman, and my race is not a docile one. Here, in this village, I have noticed a good deal, and the massaja gossips to me. There was a fight in the street the other night. The men were knifing each other. The parroco sent them word that they should come at once to his house—per pacificarli. They went. There is a girl, living with her sister, whose husband has a bad reputation. The parroco ordered her to leave—found another home for her. She left. There is a lad who made some blasphemous remarks in the street on the day of the Madonna's procession. The parroco ordered him to do penance. He did it. But those things are not English. Perhaps they are Bavarian?'
He winced, but he had recovered his composure.
'Yes, madame, they are Bavarian also. But it seems that even an
Englishwoman can sometimes feel the need of another judgment than her own?'
She smiled. All the time that she had made her little speech about the village, she had been casting quick glances along the road. It was evident that her mind was only half employed with what she was saying. The rose-flush in her cheeks, the dainty dress, the halo of fair hair gave her back youth and beauty; and the priest gazed at her in astonishment.
'Ah!'—she said, with a vivacity that was almost violence—'here she is. Father—please—!' And with a peremptory gesture, she signed to him to draw back, as she had done, into the shadow, out of sight of the road.
But the advancing figure was plain to both of them.
Lucy mounted the hill with a slow and tired step. Her eyes were on the ground. The whole young form drooped under the heat, and under a weight of thought still more oppressive. As it came nearer a wave of sadness seemed to come with it, dimming the sunshine and the green splendour of the woods.