te
she will be in the Ultenthal before sunset.' A wooded height ranged on
his left as he descended rapidly. Coming to a roll of grass dotted with
grey rock, he climbed it, and mounting one of the boulders, beheld at a
distance of half-a-dozen stone-throws downward, the figure of a woman
holding her hand cup-shape to a wayside fall of water. The path by which
she was going rounded the height he stood on. He sprang over the rocks,
catching up his clattering steel scabbard; and plunging through tinted
leafage and green underwood, steadied his heels on a sloping bank, and
came down on the path with stones and earth and brambles, in time to
appear as a seated pedestrian when Vittoria turned the bend of the
mountain way.

Gracefully withdrawing the cigar from his mouth, and touching his breast
with turned-in fingers, he accosted her with a comical operatic effort at
her high notes

'Italia!'

She gathered her arms on her bosom and looked swiftly round: then at the
apparition of her enemy.

It is but an ironical form of respect that you offer to the prey you have
been hotly chasing and have caught. Weisspriess conceived that he had
good reasons for addressing her in the tone best suited to his character:
he spoke with a ridiculous mincing suavity:

'My pretty sweet! are you not tired? We have not seen one another for
days! Can you have forgotten the enthusiastic Herr Johannes? You have
been in pleasant company, no doubt; but I have been all--all alone. Think
of that! What an exceedingly fortunate chance this is! I was smoking
dolefully, and imagining anything but such a rapture.--No, no,
mademoiselle, be mannerly.' The captain blocked her passage. 'You must
not leave me while I am speaking. A good governess would have taught you
that in the nursery. I am afraid you had an inattentive governess, who
did not impress upon you the duty of recognizing friends when you meet
them! Ha! you were educated in England, I have heard. Shake hands. It is
our custom--I think a better one--to kiss on the right cheek and the
left, but we will shake hands.'

'In God's name, sir, let me go on,' Vittoria could just gather voice to
utter.

'But,' cried the delighted captain, 'you address me in the tones of a
basso profundo! It is absurd. Do you suppose that I am to be deceived by
your artifice?--rogue that you are! Don't I know you are a woman? a
sweet, an ecstatic, a darling little woman!'

He laughed. She shivered