d 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 to hear the solitary echoes. There was
sunlight on the farthest Adige walls, but damp shade already filled the
East-facing hollows.

'I beg you very earnestly, to let me go on,' said Vittoria.

'With equal earnestness, I beg you to let me accompany you,' he replied.
'I mean no offence, mademoiselle;