quite alone, and she looked out upon an unbroken solitude--that
fair neglected garden with its high walls which seemed to give it an air
of peculiar exclusiveness.

"I will not go," she said, speaking quickly to herself in an odd, uneven
tone. "The law of England shall not make me. I am an old woman. If they
do, they cannot open my lips. I! to stand up in one of their courts, and
tell the story of my shame, that they may listen and condemn my son. Oh,
Bernard, Bernard, Bernard! The Lord have mercy upon you for this your
crime! Mine was the sin. Mine should be the guilt. Oh, my God, my God!
Is this just, in my old age, to pour down this fire of punishment upon
my bowed head? Have I not suffered and done penance--ay, until I had
even thought that I had won for myself peace and rest and forgiveness?
Was it a sin to think so? Is this my punishment? Oh, Bernard, my son, my
son! Let not the sin be his, O Lord. It is mine--mine only!"

Sweet perfumes were floating upon the soft still air, and away on the
hill sides the morning mists were rolling away. The sun's warmth fell
upon the earth and the flowers, and birds and humming insects were glad.
And in the midst of it all she stood there, a silent, stony figure,
grief and anguish and despair written in her worn face. God was dealing
very hardly with her, she cried in her agony. Truly sin was everlasting.

"Signorina!"

She turned round with a start. A servant girl stood by her side with a
card on a salver.

"A gentleman to see the signorina," she announced; "an English
gentleman."

The woman turned pale with fear, and her fingers trembled. She would not
even glance at the name on the card.

"Tell him that I see no one. I am ill. I will not see him, be his
business what it may. Do you hear, child? Go and send him away."

The girl curtsied and disappeared. Her mistress stepped back into the
room, and listened fearfully. Soon there came what she had dreaded, the
sound of an altercation. She could hear Nicolette protesting in her
shrill _patois_, and a rather vulgar, but very determined English voice,
vigorously asserting itself. Then there came the sound of something
almost like a scuffle, and Nicolette came running in with red eyes.

"Signorina, the brute, the brute!" she cried; "he will come in. He dared
to lay his hands upon me. See, he is here! Oh, that Marco had been in
the house! He should have beaten him, the dog, the coward, to oppose a
woman's will by force!"