And even so, when Kenyon chanced to make a distinct reference to Donatello’s relations with Miriam (though the subject was already in both their minds), a ghastly emotion rose up out of the depths of the young Count’s heart.  He trembled either with anger or terror, and glared at the sculptor with wild eyes, like a wolf that meets you in the forest, and hesitates whether to flee or turn to bay.  But, as Kenyon still looked calmly at him, his aspect gradually became less disturbed, though far from resuming its former quietude.

“You have spoken her name,” said he, at last, in an altered and tremulous tone; “tell me, now, all that you know of her.”

“I scarcely think that I have any later intelligence than yourself,” answered Kenyon; “Miriam left Rome at about the time of your own departure.  Within a day or two after our last meeting at the Church of the Capuchins, I called at her studio and found it vacant.  Whither she has gone, I cannot tell.”

Donatello asked no further questions.

They rose from table, and strolled together about the premises, whiling away the afternoon with brief intervals of unsatisfactory conversation, and many shadowy silences.  The sculptor had a perception of change in his companion,—­possibly of growth and development, but certainly of change,—­which saddened him, because it took away much of the simple grace that was the best of Donatello’s peculiarities.

Kenyon betook himself to repose that night in a grim, old, vaulted apartment, which, in the lapse of five or six centuries, had probably been the birth, bridal, and death chamber of a great many generations of the Monte Beni family.  He was aroused, soon after daylight, by the clamor of a tribe of beggars who had taken their stand in a little rustic lane that crept beside that portion of the villa, and were addressing their petitions to the open windows.  By and by they appeared to have received alms, and took their departure.

“Some charitable Christian has sent those vagabonds away,” thought the sculptor, as he resumed his interrupted nap; “who could it be?  Donatello has his own rooms in the tower; Stella, Tomaso, and the cook are a world’s width off; and I fancied myself the only inhabitant in this part of the house.”

In the breadth and space which so delightfully characterize an Italian villa, a dozen guests might have had each his suite of apartments without infringing upon one another’s ample precincts.  But, so far as Kenyon knew, he was the only visitor beneath Donatello’s widely extended roof.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENI