There was nothing to be done, save to go heavily away, and await whatever good or ill to-morrow’s daylight might disclose.

Betimes in the morning, therefore, Kenyon went back to the Via Portoghese, before the slant rays of the sun had descended halfway down the gray front of Hilda’s tower.  As he drew near its base, he saw the doves perched in full session, on the sunny height of the battlements, and a pair of them—­who were probably their mistress’s especial pets, and the confidants of her bosom secrets, if Hilda had any—­came shooting down, and made a feint of alighting on his shoulder.  But, though they evidently recognized him, their shyness would not yet allow so decided a demonstration.  Kenyon’s eyes followed them as they flew upward, hoping that they might have come as joyful messengers of the girl’s safety, and that he should discern her slender form, half hidden by the parapet, trimming the extinguished lamp at the Virgin’s shrine, just as other maidens set about the little duties of a household.  Or, perhaps, he might see her gentle and sweet face smiling down upon him, midway towards heaven, as if she had flown thither for a day or two, just to visit her kindred, but had been drawn earthward again by the spell of unacknowledged love.

But his eyes were blessed by no such fair vision or reality; nor, in truth, were the eager, unquiet flutterings of the doves indicative of any joyful intelligence, which they longed to share with Hilda’s friend, but of anxious inquiries that they knew not how to utter.  They could not tell, any more than he, whither their lost companion had withdrawn herself, but were in the same void despondency with him, feeling their sunny and airy lives darkened and grown imperfect, now that her sweet society was taken out of it.

In the brisk morning air, Kenyon found it much easier to pursue his researches than at the preceding midnight, when, if any slumberers heard the clamor that he made, they had responded only with sullen and drowsy maledictions, and turned to sleep again.  It must be a very dear and intimate reality for which people will be content to give up a dream.  When the sun was fairly up, however, it was quite another thing.  The heterogeneous population, inhabiting the lower floor of the old tower, and the other extensive regions of the palace, were now willing to tell all they knew, and imagine a great deal more.  The amiability of these Italians, assisted by their sharp and nimble wits, caused them to overflow with plausible suggestions, and to be very bounteous in their avowals of interest for the lost Hilda.  In a less demonstrative people, such expressions would have implied an eagerness to search land and sea, and never rest till she were found.  In the mouths that uttered them they meant good wishes, and were, so far, better than indifference.  There was little doubt that many of them felt a genuine kindness for the shy, brown-haired, delicate young foreign maiden, who had flown from some distant land to alight upon their tower, where she consorted only with the doves.  But their energy expended itself in exclamation, and they were content to leave all more active measures to Kenyon, and to the Virgin, whose affair it was to see that the faithful votary of her lamp received no harm.