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On the north-eastern side the woods, broken by the stone-fall of the Sassetto, sank sharply to the river; on the other the village and the vineyards pressed upon its very doors. The great entrance gateway opened on a squalid village street, alive with crawling babies and chatting mothers.
On his arm she crept down the road, to the Sassetto, while Lucy drove with the Contessa. Or Manisty read aloud to her on the loggia, while Lucy in the courtyard below sat chatting fast to a swarm of village children who would always henceforward associate her white dress and the pure oval of her face with their dreams of the Madonna.
I wish she would come in it is getting too hot for her to be out. 'Madame, I have not been on the road. I came around through the Sassetto. There I found no one. 'Pray sit down, Father. That chair has all its legs. It comes from Orvieto. But he did not accept her invitation at least not at once. He remained hesitating looking down upon her.
Manisty, it appeared, had taken coffee with Father Benecke at six, and had then strolled up the Sassetto path with his cigarette. Lucy had been out since the first church bells. Father Benecke reported his meeting with her on the road. Eleanor listened to him with a sort of gay self-restraint. 'Yes I know' she said, nodding 'I know.
And throughout the 'Sassetto' there reigned a peculiar and delicious coolness the blended breath of mountain and forest. The smooth path that Eleanor and Lucy had been following wound in and out among the strange rock-masses, bearing the signs of having been made at great cost and difficulty. Soon, also, benches of grey stone began to mark the course of it at frequent intervals.
Eleanor presently gathered that they were living in the strictest seclusion and saw no visitors. 'Then why' she asked herself, wondering 'did she speak to us in the Sassetto? and why are we admitted now? Ah! that is his portrait! For at the Contessa's elbow, on a table specially given up to it, she perceived a large framed photograph draped in black.
It was like a gesture of eternal farewell; the gesture of a child expressing the heart of a woman. Eleanor tottered back. She sat on the edge of her bed, motionless in the darkness, till the sounds of Cecco bringing up the pranzo in the corridor outside warned her that her time of solitude was over. In the evening Eleanor was sitting in the Sassetto.
Nor did she pause till they were in the middle of the Sassetto. 'Explain what we are doing! he implored her, as she allowed him to press his old limbs for a moment on his stick, and take breath. She, too, leant against a tree panting. 'You said, Father, that Mr. Manisty was to leave you at midday. 'And you wish to see him? he cried.
She bade him good-night, and left him. With her feeble step she slowly mounted the Sassetto path, and it was some little time before her slender form and white dress disappeared among the trees. Father Benecke remained alone a prey to many conflicting currents of thought. For him too the hour had been strangely troubling and revolutionary.
'Non, Madame; c'est plus fort que moi! she had said to Eleanor one day that she had come across Mrs. Burgoyne and Father Benecke together in the Sassetto in after-excuse for her behaviour to him. 'For you and me bien entendu! we think what we please. Heaven knows I am not bigoted. Teresa makes herself unhappy about me. The stout, imperious woman stifled a sigh that betrayed much.
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