Marc’antonio glanced at her across his shoulder and growled angrily.

“Your pardon, Princess,” said I, slowly, as she closed the gate after the last of the hogs and came forward.  “I have been remiss, but I need no help either for this or for any of my work.”

She halted a few paces from the grave.  “You would rather be alone?” she asked simply.

“I wish you to understand,” said I, “that for the present I have no choice at all but your will.”

She frowned.  “I thought to lighten your work, cavalier.”

I was about to thank her ironically when the sound of a horn broke the silence about us, its notes falling through the clear morning air from the heights across the valley.  The Corsicans dropped their spades.

“Ajo, listen!  Listen!” cried Marc’antonio, excitedly.  “That will be the Prince—­listen again!  Yes, and they are answering from the mountain.  It can be no other than the Prince, returning this way!”

While we stood with our faces upturned to the granite crags, I caught the Princess regarding me doubtfully.  Her gaze passed on as if to interrogate Marc’antonio and Stephanu, who, however, paid no heed, being preoccupied.

Again the horn sounded; not clear as before, although close at hand, for the thick woods muffled it.  For another three minutes we waited—­the Princess silent, standing a little apart, with thoughtful brow, the two men conversing in rapid guttural undertones; then far up the track beneath the boughs a musket-barrel glinted, and another and another, glint following glint, as a file of men came swinging down between the pines, disappeared for a moment, and rounding a thicket of the undergrowth emerged upon the level clearing.  In dress and bearing they were not to be distinguished from Marc’antonio, Stephanu, or any of the bandits on the mountain.  Each man carried a musket and each wore the jacket and breeches of sad-coloured velvet, the small cap and leathern leggings, which I afterwards learnt to be the uniform of patriotic Corsica.  But as they deployed upon the glade—­some forty men in all—­and halted at sight of us, my eyes fell upon a priest, who in order of marching had been midmost, or nearly midmost, of the file, and upon a young man beside him, toward whom the Princess sprang with a light step and a cry of salutation.

“The blessing of God be upon you, O brother!”

“And upon you, O sister!” He took her kiss and returned it, yet (as I thought) with less fervour.  Across her shoulder his gaze fell on me, with a kind of peevish wonder, and he drew back a little as if in the act to question her.  But she was beforehand with him for the moment.

“And how hast thou fared, O Camillo?” she asked, leaning back, with a hand upon his either shoulder, to look into his eyes.

He disengaged himself sullenly, avoiding her gaze.  There could be no doubt that the two faces thus confronting one another belonged to brother and sister, yet of the two his was the more effeminate, and its very beauty (he was an excessively handsome lad, albeit diminutively built) seemed to oppose itself to hers and caricature it, being so like yet so infinitely less noble.