In the afternoon, the monk went to the town to seek the young artist, and also to inquire for the stranger for whom his pastoral offices were in requisition, and Agnes remained alone in the little solitary garden.

It was one of those rich slumberous afternoons of spring that seem to bathe earth and heaven with an Elysian softness; and from her little lonely nook shrouded in dusky shadows by its orange-trees, Agnes looked down the sombre gorge to where the open sea lay panting and palpitating in blue and violet waves, while the little white sails of fishing-boats drifted hither and thither, now silvered in the sunshine, now fading away like a dream into the violet vapor bands that mantled the horizon.  The weather would have been oppressively sultry but for the gentle breeze which constantly drifted landward with coolness in its wings.  The hum of the old town came to her ear softened by distance and mingled with the patter of the fountain and the music of birds singing in the trees overhead.  Agnes tried to busy herself with her spinning; but her mind constantly wandered away, and stirred and undulated with a thousand dim and unshaped thoughts and emotions, of which she vaguely questioned in her own mind.  Why did Father Francesco warn her so solemnly against an earthly love?  Did he not know her vocation?  But still he was wisest and must know best; there must be danger, if he said so.  But then, this knight had spoken so modestly, so humbly,—­so differently from Giulietta’s lovers!—­for Giulietta had sometimes found a chance to recount to Agnes some of her triumphs.  How could it be that a knight so brave and gentle, and so piously brought up, should become an infidel?  Ah, uncle Antonio was right,—­he must have had some foul wrong, some dreadful injury!  When Agnes was a child, in travelling with her grandmother through one of the highest passes of the Apennines, she had chanced to discover a wounded eagle, whom an arrow had pierced, sitting all alone by himself on a rock, with his feathers ruffled, and a film coming over his great, clear, bright eye,—­and, ever full of compassion, she had taken him to nurse, and had travelled for a day with him in her arms; and the mournful look of his regal eyes now came into her memory.  “Yes,” she said to herself, “he is like my poor eagle!  The archers have wounded him, so that he is glad to find shelter even with a poor maid like me; but it was easy to see my eagle had been king among birds, even as this knight is among men.  Certainly, God must love him,—­he is so beautiful and noble!  I hope dear uncle will find him this afternoon; he knows how to teach him;—­as for me, I can only pray.”