Lucrezia got up and came slowly to the seat by the ravine. Hermione took her hand.
"You like Sebastiano very much, don't you?"
Lucrezia hung her head.
"Si, signora," she whispered.
"Do you think he'd be good to a woman if she loved him?"
"I shouldn't care. Bad or good, I'd—I'd—"
Suddenly, with a sort of childish violence, she put her two hands on Hermione's arms.
"I want Sebastiano, signora; I want him!" she cried. "I've prayed to the Madonna della Rocca to give him to me; all last year I've prayed, and this. D'you think the Madonna's going to do it? Do you? Do you?"
Heat came out of her two hands, and heat flashed in her eyes. Her broad bosom heaved, and her lips, still parted when she had done speaking, seemed to interrogate Hermione fiercely in the silence. Before Hermione could reply two sounds came to them: from below in the ravine the distant drone of the ceramella, from above on the mountain-top the dry crack of a pistol-shot.
Swiftly Lucrezia turned and looked downward, but Hermione looked upward towards the bare flank that rose behind the cottage.