CHAPTER XVIII

Meanwhile, very shortly after Orso’s departure, Colomba’s spies had warned her that the Barricini were out on the warpath, and from that moment she was racked by the most intense anxiety.  She was to be seen moving hither and thither all over the house, between the kitchen and the rooms that were being made ready for her guests, doing nothing, yet always busy, and constantly stopping to look out of a window for any unusual stir in the village.  Toward eleven o’clock, a somewhat numerous cavalcade rode into Pietranera.  This was the colonel, with his daughter, their servants, and their guide.  Colomba’s first word, as she welcomed them, was “Have you seen my brother?” Then she questioned the guide as to the road they had taken, and the hour of their departure, and having heard his answers, she could not understand why they had not met him.

“Perhaps,” said the guide, “your brother took the higher path; we came by the lower one.”

But Colomba only shook her head and asked more questions.  In spite of her natural firmness of character, increased as it was by her proud desire to conceal any sign of weakness before strangers, she could not hide her anxiety, and as soon as she had informed them of the attempted reconciliation, and of its unfortunate issue, this was shared by the colonel and Miss Lydia.  Miss Nevil became very uneasy, and wanted to have messengers sent off in every direction, and her father offered to remount at once and set out with the guide in search of Orso.  Her guests’ alarm recalled Colomba to a sense of her duties as a hostess.  She strove to force a smile as she pressed the colonel to come to table, and suggested twenty plausible reasons, which she herself demolished within an instant, to account for her brother’s delay.  The colonel, feeling it to be his duty, as a man, to reassure the ladies, put forward his own explanation.

“I’ll wager,” he said, “that della Rebbia has come across some game or other.  He has not been able to stand out against that temptation, and we shall soon see him come in with a heavy bag.  ’Pon my soul,” he went on, “we did hear four shots fired on the road.  Two of them were louder than the others, and I said to my girl, ’I’ll bet anything that’s della Rebbia out shooting!  My gun is the only one that would make that noise.’”

Colomba turned pale, and Lydia, who was watching her closely, had no difficulty in guessing the suspicions with which the colonel’s conjecture had inspired her.  After a few minutes’ silence, Colomba eagerly inquired whether the two louder reports had been heard before or after the others.  But neither the colonel, his daughter, nor the guide had paid much attention to this all-important detail.

Toward one o’clock, as none of Colomba’s messengers had yet returned, she gathered all her courage, and insisted that her guests should sit down to table with her.  But, except the colonel, none of them could eat.  At the slightest sound in the square, Colomba ran to the window.  Then drearily she returned to her place, and struggled yet more drearily to carry on a trivial conversation, to which nobody paid the slightest attention, and which was broken by long intervals of silence.  All at once they heard a horse’s gallop.