‘I am not of high blood,’ said Vittoria.

’Countess Ammiani overlooks it.  And besides, low blood may be elevated without the intervention of a miracle.  You have a noble heart, signorina.  It may be the will of God that you should perpetuate our race.  All of us save Carlo Ammiani seem to be falling.’

Vittoria bent her head, distressed by a broad beam of sunlight.  The country undulating to the plain lay under them, the great Alps above, and much covert on all sides.  They entered a forest pathway, following chance for safety.  The dark leafage and low green roofing tasted sweeter to their senses than clear air and sky.  Dark woods are home to fugitives, and here there was soft footing, a surrounding gentleness,—­ grass, and moss with dead leaves peacefully flat on it.  The birds were not timorous, and when a lizard or a snake slipped away from her feet, it was amusing to Vittoria and did not hurt her tenderness to see that they were feared.  Threading on beneath the trees, they wound by a valley’s incline, where tumbled stones blocked the course of a green water, and filled the lonely place with one onward voice.  When the sun stood over the valley they sat beneath a chestnut tree in a semicircle of orange rock to eat the food which Angelo had procured at the inn.  He poured out wine for her in the hollow of a stone, deep as an egg-shell, whereat she sipped, smiling at simple contrivances; but no smile crossed the face of Angelo.  He ate and drank to sustain his strength, as a weapon is sharpened; and having done, he gathered up what was left, and lay at her feet with his eyes fixed upon an old grey stone.  She, too, sat brooding.  The endless babble and noise of the water had hardened the sense of its being a life in that solitude.  The floating of a hawk overhead scarce had the character of an animated thing.  Angelo turned round to look at her, and looking upward as he lay, his sight was smitten by spots of blood upon one of her torn white feet, that was but half-nestled in the folds of her dress.  Bending his head down, like a bird beaking at prey, he kissed the foot passionately.  Vittoria’s eyelids ran up; a chord seemed to snap within her ears:  she stole the shamed foot into concealment, and throbbed, but not fearfully, for Angelo’s forehead was on the earth.  Clumps of grass, and sharp flint-dust stuck between his fists, which were thrust out stiff on either side of him.  She heard him groan heavily.  When he raised his face, it was white as madness.  Her womanly nature did not shrink from caressing it with a touch of soothing hands.

She chanced to say, ‘I am your sister.’

‘No, by God! you are not my sister,’ cried the young man.  ’She died without a stain of blood; a lily from head to foot, and went into the vault so.  Our mother will see that.  She will kiss the girl in heaven and see that.’  He rose, crying louder:  ‘Are there echoes here?’ But his voice beat against the rocks undoubted.