“In a week I will return,” Nobili had said.  In a week.  And his eyes had rested upon her as he spoke the words in a mist of love.  Enrica’s face was pale and almost stern, and her blue eyes had strange lights and shadows in them.  How came it that, since he had left her, the world had grown so old and gray?—­that all the impulse of her nature, the quick ebb and flow of youth and hope, was stilled and faded out, and all her thoughts absorbed into a dreadful longing?  She could not tell, nor could she tell what ailed her; but she felt that she was changed.  She tried to listen to the prattle of the two children—­to Pipa singing above: 

  “Come out! come out! 
  Never despair! 
  Father and mother and sweetheart,
  All will be there!”

Enrica could not listen.  It was the dark abyss below that drew her toward its silent bosom.  She hung over the wall, her eyes measuring its depths.  What ailed her?  Was she smitten mad by the wild tumult of joy that had swept over her as she stood hand-in-hand with Nobili?  Or was she on the eve of some crisis?—­a crisis of life and death?  Oh! why had Nobili left her?  When would he return?  She could not tell.  All she knew was, that in the streaming sunlight of this wondrous morning, when earth and heaven were as fair as on the first creation-day, without him all was dark, sad, and dreary.

CHAPTER II.

A STORM AT THE VILLA.

A footstep was heard upon the gravel.  The dogs shut up in the cave scratched furiously, then barked loudly.  Following the footsteps a bareheaded peasant appeared, his red shirt open, showing his sunburnt chest.  He ran up to the open door, a letter in his hand.  Seeing Enrica sitting on the low wall, he stopped and made her a rustic bow.

“Who are you?” Enrica asked, her heart beating wildly.

“Illustrissima,” and the man bowed again, “I am Giacomo—­Giacomo protected by his reverence Fra Pacifico.  You have heard of Giacomo?”

Enrica shook her head impatiently.

“Surely you are the Signorina Enrica?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Then this letter is for you.”  And Giacomo stepped up and gave it into her outstretched hand.  “I was to tell the illustrissima that the letter had come express from Lucca to Fra Pacifico.  Fra Pacifico could not bring it down himself, because the wife of the baker Pietro is ill, and he is nursing her.”

Enrica took the letter, then stared at Giacomo so fixedly, before he turned to go, it haunted him many days after, for fear the signorina had given him the evil-eye.

Enrica held the letter in her hand.  She gazed at it (standing on the spot where she had taken it, midway between the door and the low wall, a glint of sunshine striking upon her hair, turning it to threads of gold) in silent ecstasy.  It was Nobili’s first letter to her.  His name was in the corner, his monogram on the seal.  The letter came to her in her loneliness like Nobili’s visible presence.  Ah! who does not recall the rapture of a first love-letter!—­the tangible assurance it brings that our lover is still our own—­the hungry eye that runs over every line traced by that dear hand—­the oft-repeated words his voice has spoken stamped on the page—­the hidden sense—­the half-dropped sentences—­all echoing within us as note to note in chords of music!