by amazement at the flashing richness of the dress of the heroine Camilla.  Entering into the state of her mind spontaneously, Vittoria sought to induce the child to kiss her; but quite vainly.  The child’s reverence for the dress allowed her only to be within reach of the hem of it, so as to delight her curiosity.  Vittoria smiled when, as she sat up, the child fell back against the wall; and as she rose to her feet, the child scampered from the room.  ’My poor Camilla! you can charm somebody, yet,’ she said, limping; her visage like a broken water with the pain of her feet.  ’If the bell rings for Camilla now, what sort of an entry will she make?’ Vittoria treated her physical weakness and ailments with this spirit of humour.  ’They may say that Michiella has bewitched you, my Camilla.  I think your voice would sound as if it were dragging its feet after it just as a stork flies.  O my Camilla! don’t I wish I could do the same, and be ungraceful and at ease!  A moan is married to every note of your treble, my Camilla, like December and May.  Keep me from shrieking!’

The pangs shooting from her feet were scarce bearable, but the repression of them helped her to meet Angelo with a freer mind than, after the interval of separation, she would have had.  The old woodman was cooking a queer composition of flour and milk sprinkled with salt for them.  Angelo cut a stout cloth to encase each of her feet, and bound them in it.  He was more cheerful than she had ever seen him, and now first spoke of their destination.  His design was to conduct her near to Bormio, there to engage a couple of men in her service who would accompany her to Meran, by the Val di Sole, while he crossed the Stelvio alone, and turning leftward in the Tyrolese valley, tried the passage into Switzerland.

Bormio, if, when they quitted the forest, a conveyance could be obtained, was no more than a short day’s distance, according to the old woodman’s directions.  Vittoria induced the little girl to sit upon her knee, and sang to her, but greatly unspirited the charm of her dress.  The sun was rising as they bade adieu to the hut.

About mid-day they quitted the shelter of forest trees and stood on broken ground, without a path to guide them.  Vittoria did her best to laugh at her mishaps in walking, and compared herself to a Capuchin pilgrim; but she was unused to going bareheaded and shoeless, and though she held on bravely, the strong beams of the sun and the stony ways warped her strength.  She had to check fancies drawn from Arabian tales, concerning the help sometimes given by genii of the air and enchanted birds, that were so incessant and vivid that she found herself sulking at the loneliness and helplessness of the visible sky, and feared that her brain was losing its hold of things.  Angelo led her to a half-shaded hollow, where they finished the remainder of yesterday’s meat and wine.  She set her eyes upon a gold-green lizard by a stone and slept.