“And you, young seer, that are of the moorland and the heather,” she said, “where would you be in such a city?”

“As for me,” I said, “I would stand far off and watch you as you passed by.”

“Ah, Messer Dante Alighieri, do not make a mistake.  I am no Beatrice.  I love not chill aloofness.  I am but Lucia, here to-day and gone to-morrow.  But rather than all rhapsodies, I would that you were just my friend, and no further off than where I can reach you my hand and you can take it.”

So saying, because we came to the little bridge where the pines meet overhead, she reached me her hand at the word; and as it lay in mine I stooped and kissed it, which seemed the most natural thing in the world to do.

She looked at me earnestly, and I thought there was a reproachful pity in her eyes.

“Friend of mine, you will keep your promise,” she said.  I knew well enough what promise it was that she meant.

“Fear not,” I replied; “I promise and I keep.”

Yet all the while my heart was busy planning how through all the future I might abide near by her side.

We turned and walked slowly back.  The hotel stood clear and sharp in the morning sunshine, and a light wind was making the little waves plash on the pebbles with a pleasant clapping sound.

“See,” she said, “here is my brother coming to meet us.  Tell me if you have been happy this morning?”

“Oh,” I said quickly, “happy!—­you know that without needing to be told.”

“No matter what I know,” the Countess said, with a certain petulance, swift and lovable—­“tell it me.”

So I said obediently, yet as one that means his words to the full—­

“I have been happier than ever I thought to be this morning!”

“Lucia!” she said softly—­“say Lucia!”

“Lucia!” I answered to her will; yet I thought she did not well to try me so hard.

Then her brother came up briskly and heartily, like one who had been a-foot many hours, asking us how we did.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CRIMSON SHAWL

Henry Fenwick and the Count went shooting.  He came and asked my leave as one who is uncertain of an answer.  And I gave it guiltily, saying to myself that anything which took his mind off Madame Von Eisenhagen was certainly good.  But there leaped in my heart a great hope that, in what remained of the day, I might again see the Countess.

I was grievously disappointed.  For though I lounged all the afternoon in the pleasant spaces by the lake, only the servants, of the great empty hotel passed at rare intervals.  Of Lucia I saw nothing, till the Count and Henry passed in with their guns and found me with my book.

“Have you been alone all the afternoon?” they said, innocently enough.  And it was some consolation to answer “Yes,” and so to receive their sympathy.