United States or Jamaica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She raised her hand, opened it slowly, and gazed at it. Her hand was empty. "Where is ?" Enrica asked, in a voice like a sigh then she stopped, and gazed up again distressfully into Pipa's face. Pipa knew that Count Nobili's letter had been taken by Fra Pacifico. Now she bent over Enrica in an agony of fear lest, when her reason came and she missed that letter, she should sink back again and die.
They had gone into Pipa's room until the villa was made ready. Pipa told Adamo, and he told the others, that the marchesa had not seen the burning papers, and the lighted pile of wood, until the flames rose high behind her back. She had rushed forward, and fallen.
"O Gesù!" cries Pipa in a loud voice, starting back, forgetting his injunction "is it not about the signorina?" "Hold your tongue, Pipa, or I will tell you nothing." Pipa's head is instantly close to the cavaliere's, her face all eagerness. "Yes, it is about the signorina the countess. She is gone!"
The dogs, too, are wilder than ever." "Riverenza, I know nothing. Perhaps there are some deserters about. We are used to the dogs. I never hear them. I am come from the signorina." At that name Count Nobili looks up and meets Pipa's gaze. If Pipa could have stabbed him then and there with the silver dagger in her black hair she would have done it, and counted it a righteous act.
She handled the sheets then extended both her hands to Pipa, as if she had been buried and asked to be raised up again. She tried to sit up, but she fell back upon her pillow. Pipa's arms were round her in an instant. She put back the long hair that fell upon Enrica's face, and poured into her mouth a few drops of a cordial Fra Pacifico had left for her.
At first she was so stunned she forgot his name; then it came to her. Yes, the poet Marescotti Trenta's friend who had raved on the Guinigi Tower. What was he to her? Marry Marescotti! Oh! who could have said it? Gradually, as Enrica's mind became clearer, lying there so still with no sound but Pipa's measured breathing, she felt to its full extent how Nobili had wronged her.
Wretches, they deserve it! poaching in my woods! Listen before you go, tell Pipa to come to me soon." Pipa's footsteps came clattering up the stairs to the marchesa's room. The light of the lamp she carried for it was already dark within the tower caught the spray of the fountain outside as she passed the narrow slits that served for windows.
Already Pipa's arms are round him. Angelo, too, has caught him by the legs, then leaps into the air with a wild hoot. Bewildered Pipa cannot speak. No more can Adamo; but Pipa's clinging arms say more than words. Tenderly Adamo lays the marchesa down beside the fountain. He totters on a step or two, feeling suddenly giddy and strangely weak. He stands still.
Marriage, to Pipa's simple mind especially marriage with money must bring certain blessings, and crowds of children; she would as soon doubt the seven wounds of the Madonna as doubt this. Pipa has seen Count Nobili. She approves of him. His curly auburn hair, so short and crisp; his bold look and gracious smile not to speak of certain notes he slipped into her hand have quite conquered her.
But if any thing lurks there that mocks Pipa's mirth, it is not visible to Pipa's outward eye, so she continues addressing herself to Enrica, who is utterly bewildered by her strange ways. Pipa cannot bear to think that Enrica never dressed for her betrothed. "Poverina!" she says to her, "not dress not dress! What degradation!
Word Of The Day