Yes, she would live—­live a new life with him.  And Nobili had done it—­done it unconsciously, as the sun unfolds the bosom of the rose, and from the delicate bud creates the perfect flower.

Something Nobili understood of what was passing within her, but not all.  He had yet to learn the treasures of faith and love shut up in the bosom of that silent girl—­to learn how much she loved him—­only him. (A new lesson for one who had trifled with so many, and given and taken such facile oaths!)

Neither spoke, but wandered up and down in vague delight.

Why was it that at this moment Nobili’s thoughts strayed to Lucca, and to Nera Boccarini?—­Nera rose before him, glowing and velvet-eyed, as on that night she had so tempted him.  He drove her image from him.  Nera was dead to him.  Dead?—­Fool!—­And did he think that any thing can die?  Do not our very thoughts rise up and haunt us in some subtile consequence of after-life?  Nothing dies—­nothing is isolated.  Each act of daily intercourse—­the merest trifle, as the gravest issue—­makes up the chain of life.  Link by link that chain draws on, weighted with good or ill, and clings about us to the very grave.

Thinking of Nera, Nobili’s color changed—­a dark look clouded his ready smile.  Enrica asked, “What pains you?”

“Nothing, love, nothing,” Nobili answered vaguely, “only I fear I am not worthy of you.”

Enrica raised her eyes to his.  Such a depth of tenderness and purity beamed from them, that Nobili asked himself with shame, how he could have forgotten her.  With this blue-eyed angel by his side it seemed impossible, and yet—­

Pressing Enrica’s hand more tightly, he placed it fondly on his own.  “So small, so true,” he murmured, gazing at it as it lay on his broad palm.

“Yes, Nobili, true to death,” she answered, with a sigh.

Still holding her hand, “Enrica,” he said, solemnly, “I swear to love you and no other, while I live.  God is my witness!”

As he lifted up his head in the earnestness with which he spoke, the sunshine, streaming downward, shone full upon his face.

Enrica trembled.  “Oh! do not say too much,” she cried, gazing up at him entranced.

With that sun-ray upon his face, Nobili seemed to her, at that moment, more than mortal!

“Angel!” exclaimed Count Nobili, wrought up to sudden passion, “can you doubt me?”

Before Enrica could reply, a snake, warmed by the hot sun, curled upward from the terraced wall behind them, where it had basked, and glided swiftly between them.  Nobili’s heel was on it; in an instant he had crushed its head.  But there between them lay the quivering reptile, its speckled scales catching the light.  Enrica shrieked and started back.

“O God! what an evil omen!” She said no more, only her shifting color and uneasy eyes told what she felt.

“An evil omen, love!” and Nobili brushed away the snake with his foot into the underwood, and laughed.  “Not so.  It is an omen that I shall crush all who would part us.  That is how I read it.”