st as her
trembling limbs could bear her, to the church.

"Is it true? Is it true?" she cried, with white lips, to Gesualdo.

He looked at her with a long, inquiring regard: then, without a word, he
drew the linen off the dead face of her husband, and pointed to it.

She, strong as a colt and full of life as a young tree, fell headlong on
the stone floor in a dead swoon.

The people gathered about the door-way and watched her suspiciously and
without compassion. There was no one there who did not believe her to be
the murderess. No one except Gesualdo. In that one moment when he had
looked into her eyes he had felt that she was guiltless. He called
Candida to her and left her, and closed the door on the curious, cruel,
staring eyes of the throng without.

The people murmured: what title had he more than they to command and
direct in this matter? The murder was a precious feast to them: why
should he defraud them of their rights?

"He knows she is guilty," they muttered, "and he wants to screen her and
give her time to recover herself and to arrange what story she shall
tell."

Soon there came the sound of horses' feet on the road, and the jingling
of chains and scabbards stirred the morning air: the carabineers had
arrived. Then came also the syndic and petty officers of the larger
village of Sant' Arturo, where the communal municipality in which Marca
was enrolled had its seat of justice, its tax-offices, and its schools.
There was a great noise and stir, grinding of wheels and shouting of
orders, vast clouds of dust and ceaseless din of voices, loud bickerings
of conflicting authorities at war with one another, and rabid
inquisitiveness and greedy excitement on all sides.

In a later time they remembered against him all this which he did now.

The feast of St. Peter and St. Paul had been a day of disaster and
disorder, but to the good people of Marca both these were sweet. They
had something to talk of from dawn till dark, and the blacker the
tragedy the merrier wagged the tongues. The soul of their vicar alone
was sick within him. Since he had seen the astonished, horrified eyes of
the woman Generosa he had never once doubted her, but he felt that her
guilt must seem clear as the noonday to all others. Her disputes with
her husband and her passion for Falko Melegari were facts known to all
the village, and who else had any interest in his death? The whole of
Marca pronounced as with one voice against her: t