Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/42

34 placed himself full in her path, and removed his hat.

"Luigi!" she exclaimed, starting back.

"Here are your diamonds!" said he; and he held out the morocco case which contained those jewels, as he spoke. Annunziata grasped it involuntarily, but almost immediately let it fall to the ground.

"Oh, Luigi!" she exclaimed, "what has made you do this?"

"It is scarcely you, signora contessa, who should put that question to me," he replied quietly.

"Oh, what a miserable woman I am!" she burst out, throwing herself down on the bank and beginning to cry bitterly. "I meant to do what was best—I did indeed! How could I know you would take things so to heart? I told you I could promise nothing—you must remember that. Oh, why should you have cared for me so much! There are so many others whom you might have married, and who would have made you far happier than I could. I meant to do what was kindest—and this is how it has ended!" And the tears poured down her cheeks.

Luigi looked at her sadly and calmly, and with just a faint touch of contempt, she thought.

"I have thought over that, and over many things lately," he said; "and I do not blame you. You intended to be kind—only you did not understand. I suppose you could not understand. I was in a hell of despair for a long time; but that is all over now, and I see that you are right, and that we never could have been happy together. Our robbing you was an accident. I had no notion that you were in these parts, or I might have prevented it. As it is, I have been able to restore you your diamonds under pretence of going down to Naples to dispose of them; but the rest of your property I am afraid you will have to lose. And now, signora, I must bid you good-bye."

"Oh, no, Luigi—not like this! Can I do nothing for you? Can I not save you from this dreadful life? See—here are my diamonds; take them—they are worth a great deal of money—enough to enable you to begin again in some other part of the country, and live honestly and happily."

Luigi shook his head with a smile. "I am greatly obliged to you, signora," he said, "but I am in no need of money; and as for 'this dreadful life,' I mean to abandon it to-morrow. Do you love your husband?"

"Of course," replied she, a little confused by this abrupt change of topic.

"I thought he looked a little old for you; but he seemed a good-natured fellow. Now you must go; it is getting too dark for you to be out alone. Good-bye, Annunziata—God bless you! Don't think of me any more."

"But Luigi," she pleaded through her tears, "you will let me hear from you?"

"No, signora; it will be better not. You understand that I must conceal myself for some time to come."

He turned to go, but suddenly faced about again, took her in his arms, and kissed her gently on the forehead. Then without another word, he walked quickly away up the hill.

Annunziata watched his tall figure striding away in the twilight till he was out of sight; and then she picked up her diamonds, and ran back to Amalfi. Luigi had not told her that escape from the mountains for so well-known a criminal as he had become was almost an impossibility, nor had he mentioned that his comrades, on his return to them without diamonds or money, would most assuredly put him to death as a traitor. But he was himself well aware of both facts, and was glad that it should be so—the world having now no attraction left in it strong enough to make him wish for life. His body was found, stabbed to the heart, in a wood near Ravello, a few days later; by which time the Comte and Comtesse de Chagny had, fortunately, left that part of the country.

The discovery of a murdered man more or less is not, or was not at any rate in those days, so unusual an incident in the neighbourhood of Amalfi as to create much stir beyond the immediate vicinity; and it was long before Annunziata became aware that when she had parted from her former lover on the hillside, he had left her only to go to his death.

M. de Chagny still relates the story of his adventure with the brigands of Amalfi, and the romantic generosity with which one of these rascals, dazzled by the beauty of the celebrated Vannini, made an appointment with her for the purpose of restoring her her diamonds. "It was a veritable Claude Duval affair," says the' count, "and is one of the most amusing reminiscences of our delightful Italian journey; but we have not been back there since; and as for my wife, she seems to have taken the country in horror."