“Wounded?” she echoed, and her glorious eyes grew very pitiful. “And alone?”
“There was a gentleman here, tending him, Madonna; but he is gone with Fra Domenico to the Convent of Acquasparta to seek the necessaries to mend his shoulder.”
“Poor gentleman,” she murmured, approaching the fallen figure. “How came he by his hurt?”
“That, Madonna, is more than I can tell.”
“Can we do nothing for him until his friends return?” was her next question, bending over the Count as she spoke. “Come, Peppino,” she cried, “lend me your aid. Get me water from the brook, yonder.”
The fool looked about him for a vessel, and his eye falling upon the Count's capacious hat, he snatched it up, and went his errand. When he returned, the lady was kneeling with the unconscious man's head in her lap. Into the hatful of water that Peppe brought her she dipped a kerchief, and with this she bathed the brow on which his long black hair lay matted and disordered.
“See how he has bled, Peppe,” said she. “His doublet is drenched, and he is bleeding still! Vergine Santa!” she cried, beholding now the ugly wound that gaped in his shoulder, and turning pale at the sight. “Assuredly he will die of it—and he so young, Peppino, and so comely to behold!”
Francesco stirred, and a sigh fluttered through his pallid lips. Then he raised his heavy lids, and their glances met and held each other. And so, eyes that were brown and tender looked down into feverish languid eyes of black, what time her gentle hand held the moist cloth to his aching brow.
“Angel of beauty!” he murmured dreamily, being but half-awake as yet to his position. Then, becoming conscious of her ministrations, “Angel of goodness!” he added, with yet deeper fervour.
She had no answer for him, saving such answer—and in itself it was eloquent enough—as her blushes made, for she was fresh from a convent and all innocent of worldly ways and tricks of gallant speech.