Vestigia. Vol. II.. Fleming George

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СКАЧАТЬ a blow. 'It can't be, lad – I tell you it can't be,' he said in a broken voice.

      A party of holiday-makers came out of a house at some distance, crossing the piazza at its farther end. The women were laughing and chattering as they went by. A young man called loudly for silence, and began to play the refrain of a love-song upon his mandoline. The swift, audacious tripping of the music came back to them from a long distance through the stillness of the night, and then again all was quiet.

      Andrea took a quick step forward. He seized the blazing remnant of the torch from its hole in the wall, and waved it suddenly before Dino's eyes. The young man gave an involuntary start backwards.

      'Oh, don't be frightened,' said Drea, with an odd laugh, 'I am only looking at your face. I feel as if I had never seen it properly. I want to remember the look of a man who cares more for the good opinion of a pack o' lying scoundrels than he cares for his oldest friends; a man who could teach my girl to love him; who could steal her heart from her; who could bear to look on at all her pretty little ways, and she all the while not knowing. I'm an old man, and perhaps I don't understand,' he said, with bitter simplicity, 'But I have lived sixty years in this world, and I've been honest. I never betrayed a trust.'

      He let the torch fall on the stones between them. The light shone full upon his white hair.

      'I loved you like my son, Dino. I would not change places with you to-night.'

      As he turned away Dino sprang forward with some passionate inarticulate ejaculation of despair. 'Andrea! – Drea – don't, don't leave me like this. Drea! you are the oldest, the best friend I've ever had; you can't believe. – You must be mad not to see how I love her – '

      The old man half paused, then shook his hand with a gesture of unbelief.

      'If it had been anybody but you, lad – you, that I've knowed from a boy – '

      He entered the darkened house, shutting the door behind him.

      It had only taken a few minutes; the voices of the women were still audible, and the sound of the mandoline.

      CHAPTER IV.

      LA MORT DANS L'ÂME

      The masses of the downs were gray and shadowy; there was only a faint streak of red in the eastern sky, and the whitened stones of the piazza had that peculiar look of stillness which transfigures familiar places seen at early dawn, when Dino came out of the house in which he had spent the night.

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