Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/163

Rh and so fortify Nona. Addio." He went out like a man who has found his way.

"Now, what the devil did the fellow mean by that?" cried Il Drudo, with his thick fingers out.

"Devilry expresses it," said a sly secretary in black.

Molly in dreams, soft as a child and glossy with sleep, looked too beautiful for a disturbing hand to dare anything that night. It would have been the act of a brute, not Amilcare's act. In small things he was all gentleness. He crept into bed like a cat, fearful of waking her, and next morning contrived, by a fit of coughing, to waken her no more than half. The rest he did by methods equally adroit, until by imperceptible degrees she learned that Rome might give no ease to her feet. He had her in the saddle and all the baggage-mules away an hour after the sun.

Arrived at Foligno, he found that his great enemy was at sanctuary in the Convent of Olivet, biting his nails in a red fume there. Hidden behind spires of cypress, Olivet stood outside the walls, a sun-dyed white building deep under brown eaves. Cesare, it was reported, was quite alone with his moods, now consumed by fidgety remorse for what he might have lost in his brother's blood, now confident and inclined to blusterous hilarity, now shuddering under an obsession of nerves. In any guise he was dangerous, but worst of all when the black fit of suspicion was upon him. So he now seemed; for being told who waited upon him, he refused point-blank to see anybody. Amilcare, at the door, heard his "Vat-