“Ah!  That must be my brother at last!” said Colomba, rising from her chair.  But when she saw Chilina astride on Orso’s horse—­“My brother is dead!” she cried, in a heart-rending voice.

The colonel dropped his glass.  Miss Lydia screamed.  They all rushed to the door of the house.  Before Chilina could jump off her steed, she was snatched up like a feather by Colomba, who held her so tight that she almost choked her.  The child understood her agonized look, and her first words were those of the chorus in Othello:  “He lives!” Colomba’s grasp relaxed, and nimbly as a kitten Chilina dropped upon the ground.

“The others?” queried Colomba hoarsely.  Chilina crossed herself with her first and middle finger.  A deep flush instantly replaced the deadly pallor of Colomba’s face.  She cast one fierce look at the Barricini dwelling, and then, with a smile, she turned to her guests.

“Let us go in and drink our coffee,” she said.

The story the bandit’s Iris had to tell was a long one.  Her narrative, translated literally into Italian by Colomba, and then into English by Miss Nevil, wrung more than one oath from the colonel, more than one sigh from the fair Lydia.  But Colomba heard it all unmoved.  Only she twisted her damask napkin till it seemed as if she must tear it in pieces.  She interrupted the child, five or six times over, to make her repeat again that Brandolaccio had said the wound was not dangerous, and that he had seen many worse.  When she had finished her tale, Chilina announced that Orso earnestly begged he might be sent writing materials, and that he desired his sister would beseech a lady who might be staying in his house not to depart from it, until she had received a letter from him.

“That is what was worrying him most,” the child added; “and even after I had started he called me back, to bid me not forget the message.  It was the third time he had given it to me.”  When Colomba heard of her brother’s injunction she smiled faintly, and squeezed the fair Englishwoman’s hand.  That young lady burst into tears, and did not seem to think it advisable to translate that particular part of the story to her father.

“Yes, my dear,” cried Colomba, kissing Miss Nevil.  “You shall stay with me, and you shall help us.”

Then, taking a pile of old linen out of a cupboard, she began to cut it up, to make lint and bandages.  Any one who saw her flashing eyes, her heightened colour, her alternate fits of anxiety and composure, would have found it hard to say whether distress at her brother’s wound, or delight at the extinction of her foes, were most affecting her.  One moment she was pouring out the colonel’s coffee, and telling him how well she made it, the next she was setting Miss Lydia and Chilina to work, exhorting them to sew bandages, and roll them up.  Then, for the twentieth time, she would ask whether Orso’s wound was very painful.  She constantly broke off her own work to exclaim to the colonel: