“Where are you?” called a voice.  It was Miss Abbott, against whose carriage they had collided.  She had relit one of the lamps, and was picking her way towards him.

“Silence!” he called again, and again they obeyed.  He shook the bundle; he breathed into it; he opened his coat and pressed it against him.  Then he listened, and heard nothing but the rain and the panting horses, and Harriet, who was somewhere chuckling to herself in the dark.

Miss Abbott approached, and took it gently from him.  The face was already chilly, but thanks to Philip it was no longer wet.  Nor would it again be wetted by any tear.

Chapter 9

The details of Harriet’s crime were never known.  In her illness she spoke more of the inlaid box that she lent to Lilia—­lent, not given—­than of recent troubles.  It was clear that she had gone prepared for an interview with Gino, and finding him out, she had yielded to a grotesque temptation.  But how far this was the result of ill-temper, to what extent she had been fortified by her religion, when and how she had met the poor idiot—­these questions were never answered, nor did they interest Philip greatly.  Detection was certain:  they would have been arrested by the police of Florence or Milan, or at the frontier.  As it was, they had been stopped in a simpler manner a few miles out of the town.

As yet he could scarcely survey the thing.  It was too great.  Round the Italian baby who had died in the mud there centred deep passions and high hopes.  People had been wicked or wrong in the matter; no one save himself had been trivial.  Now the baby had gone, but there remained this vast apparatus of pride and pity and love.  For the dead, who seemed to take away so much, really take with them nothing that is ours.  The passion they have aroused lives after them, easy to transmute or to transfer, but well-nigh impossible to destroy.  And Philip knew that he was still voyaging on the same magnificent, perilous sea, with the sun or the clouds above him, and the tides below.

The course of the moment—­that, at all events, was certain.  He and no one else must take the news to Gino.  It was easy to talk of Harriet’s crime—­easy also to blame the negligent Perfetta or Mrs. Herriton at home.  Every one had contributed—­even Miss Abbott and Irma.  If one chose, one might consider the catastrophe composite or the work of fate.  But Philip did not so choose.  It was his own fault, due to acknowledged weakness in his own character.  Therefore he, and no one else, must take the news of it to Gino.

Nothing prevented him.  Miss Abbott was engaged with Harriet, and people had sprung out of the darkness and were conducting them towards some cottage.  Philip had only to get into the uninjured carriage and order the driver to return.  He was back at Monteriano after a two hours’ absence.  Perfetta was in the house now, and greeted him cheerfully.  Pain, physical and mental, had made him stupid.  It was some time before he realized that she had never missed the child.