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In the throne-room I was suddenly caught up and whisked away, back to a rainy afternoon at Craford; and I walked beside you on the cliffs, and heard your voice, and rejoiced in the sense of your nearness to me, and in your adorable beauty, as you breasted the wind, with the sea and the sky for a background.
The may was in bloom, the tardy may, and the laburnum. The sun shone ardently, and the air was quick with the fragrant responses of the earth. A hundred yards up the avenue, Anthony Craford stopped his fly, a shabby victoria, piled with the manifold leather belongings of a traveller, and dismounted. "I 'll walk the rest of the way," he said to the flyman, giving him his fare.
And then somehow it fell open, at a page that was marked by the insertion of an empty envelope. The envelope caught Anthony's eye, and held it; and that was scarcely to be wondered at, for, in his own unmistakable handwriting, it was addressed to Madame Torrebianca, at the New Manor, Craford, England, and its upper corner bore an uncancelled twenty-five centime Italian postage-stamp.
"Shall I post this with it?" Had Susanna admitted him to her confidence? How otherwise could it have befallen, as it did, that she received Anthony's letter, which was of course addressed to Craford, at Isola Nobile no later than that very evening? She read it, smiling.
"It is all very beautiful, of course, the way the town piles itself up against the hillside, the pink and yellow and lilac blondeur of the houses, the olive gardens, the radiant sky overhead, it is all very picturesque and beautiful. But I am not hungry for beauty at least, for this beauty. If you were here with me, ah, then indeed! But you are not here, and I am hungry for Craford.
The chapel at Craford is a dim, brown little room, the same room that in the days of persecution had been a "secret" chapel, where priests and people worshipped at the peril of their lives. You enter it from the hall by a door that was once a sliding panel. In the old days there was no window, but now there is a window, a small one, lancet-shaped, set with stained glass, opening into the court.
"We put the saddle on the wrong horse ho, ho," laughed Baldo. "We 're delighted to make your acquaintance, all the same," said Franco. "And we hold you to your promise you 're to come and stay with us you and Craford both," said Baldo. "Yes there 's no getting out of that. We count upon you," said Franco. "So far as I 'm concerned, I should be charmed," said Adrian. "But I can't speak for Craford.
The servant who showed us about, an old man who said he had been in the family for I forget how many hundred years, hailed me as a 'cognate, having recognized the name of Craford, and thereupon inducted us into the appartamenti segreti, to exhibit a portrait of my grandsire. Wood itself, I dare say, must have vibrated a little at that.
He was rigid for a minute, gazing fixedly at her. "I solemnly do," he said at last, relaxing. "What's the condition?" "The condition is an easy one only a little journey to make." "A journey to make? Away from Craford?" He stood off, suspicious, prepared to be defiant. "Yes," said she, playing with the lace of one of her cushions. "Not for worlds," said he. "Anything else.
"This bosom is a sealed sanctuary for the confidences of those who confide in me. Besides, when I 'm with Madame Torrebianca, believe me, we have other subjects of conversation than the poor Squire o' Craford." "You see," said Anthony, "for the lark of the thing, I should like, for the present, to leave her in ignorance of my connection with Sampaolo." "That's right," cried Adrian.
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