When, after fumbling vainly for some minutes to find the door, and bruising her hands against the wall and oaken chair, she at last found it and thrust it open, the night without was moonless and starless and stormy, and in its unillumined blackness she saw no trace of the little girl. She went out on to the doorstep and listened, but there was no sound. The wind was high; the perfume of the stocks and wallflowers was strong; far away the sound of the river rushing through the sedges was audible in the intense stillness, an owl hooted, a nightjar sent forth its sweet, strange, sighing note. Of Nernia there was no trace. Clelia Alba came within and closed the door, and locked and bolted it.
The old woman Gianna had come downstairs with a lighted rush candle in her hand; she was scared and afraid.
"What is it? What is it, madama?"
Clelia Alba dropped down on the chair by the door.
"It is — it is — that the beggar's spawn you would have me shelter is the leman of my son; and he has dishonoured his house and mine."
Gianna shook her grey head in solemn denial and disbelief.
"Sior'a, Clelia, do not say such words or think such thoughts of your son or of the child. She is as harmless as any flower that blows out there in the garden, and he is a noble youth, though now, by the wickedness of me, distraught and off his head. What makes you revile them so?"
"They are both out this night. Is not that enough?"
Gianna was distressed; from her chamber above she had heard the words which had passed between Adone's mother and Nernia, and knew the girl was gone.
"I would condemn others, but not Adone and the child," she returned. "For sure they do not do right to have secrets from you, but they are not such secrets as you think."