ill. She was not a peasant, excellency, for her father had been a man

of some little learning, and her mother was a musician of rare gifts. Had I thought upon it, this remembrance would have led me to discern the double nature which was then my stumbling-block. For here was one reared as a savage, yet controlled at every turn by the birthright of natural culture; a vagrant in name, yet a little queen in gesture and in speech. The visions which deluded her were the visions of a past growing up and magnifying with the years; carrying one whose world was a few acres of thicket and of sand out to the life across the sea. Isolated as she was, friendless, homeless, never once did she cease to dream of a greater world, where triumph and love and that pride of self which is victory awaited her. The same spirit, I doubt not, held her back from the embraces of the peasant who worshipped her. She was grateful to the man in that he was a friend to her. But at his touch she trembled; his kisses were like coals of fire upon her lips.

“Something of these thoughts, signor, passed through my mind as the child waited upon me so prettily in her cottage. I knew that her beauty would be riches to her wherever she might carry it; I could feel instinctively that conscious superiority which birth may give and circumstance cannot check. And this was odd to recognise in one whose legs were bare and whose hands and arms were burnt almost black with her labour in the sun. Yet she had but to speak and her rags were forgotten; but to take her crazy violin in her hand to awaken the mind to passionate dreams or to all the sweets of languorous rest. Long I listened to her that night, as the dark came down upon the Adriatic, and the sea moaned upon the beach before her door. It was as though she had put some spell upon me with her wild, untrained music; had carried me back to remember forgotten days of my own childhood; had peopled the island with unnumbered men and women, or had set before my eyes visions of the greater cities themselves, with all their world of sound and light and struggle and death. The whole of her soul was in the music, excellency; it awakened her to laughter, to tears, to joy. Her face was the face of one transformed while she played; yet she had but to set down her violin, and indifference, silence, nay, almost the shadow of hate, were to be read in her eyes.

“I speak of these things, excellency, that you, when you come to hear of the whole life of the woman you have seen to-day living in luxury and in the light of gratified desire, may know of the impulses which led her to the path she followed, and of that surpassingly curious childhood which fate decreed should be her portion. When I left her that night in her cottage, to lie myself at the house of the priest, my chief thought was of her future, and of the man to whom it would be given to hold her in his arms.

“‘For,’ said I, ‘that man will either pluck a thorn for his pillow or take treasure to his house--yet which of these he is to do the God above us alone can tell.’

“Next day I rose at an early hour from my bed, and, having heard Mass in the little church, set out upon my journey to the eastern shore. There were many of the islanders now ready to help me, for the news that I had money in my pocket was quick to be noised abroad, and one old woman tottered far upon her stick that she might look at a piece of gold again. But I listened to none of them--neither to their tales of the love they had treasured secretly for the child nor to their offers of service.

“‘Fools and hypocrites,’ cried I, ‘who would drain the oil from the wounds of him that fell among thieves; even as you did unto the little one so will I do to you. Begone! or I will lay my staff upon your backs!’

“They ran at my words, signor, but still cried for alms in the Name of God; and when no alms were given to them, they cursed me until the woods echoed with their voices. Nevertheless, I turned a deaf ear to them; and going my way I came at length to the creek of the sea, and to the hut where I had found Christine again. It was my expectation that she would be up and looking for my coming; but I heard no voice when I called out to her from the garden, and when I would have knocked upon her door I saw that it was open, and that the cottage was empty. My first thought was that she had gone out to the sea to fish, for I saw that her boat no longer lay at anchor in the creek; but when I had looked a second time, and had observed the disorder which had fallen upon the place, the truth was not to be hidden from me. Everything in the cottage bore the stamp of her flight. The drawers were opened and rifled. There was an empty coffee-pot upon the rough wooden table, and two cups by it. The bed was stripped of its blankets and sheets; the crucifix was gone; the gilt mirror was cracked, as if broken in the haste of her leaving. No need of words to tell me the story. She had surrendered at last, I said, to the will of the man, and had fled--God knew to what home or to what fate.

“I said this, excellency, moved at the first to remember all my abiding love for her; the memory of her childhood and that which she had been to me then. But anon, and as I stood looking out upon the sea and the empty creek, a great anger against the man came upon it, and I vowed that wheresoever he had gone, there would I follow him, until the truth should be known and right should be done. For that she had gone away with Ugo, the son of the woodlander, I never doubted. Or had I done so, the lie would not have deceived me long. Scarce, indeed, had I turned my face again towards the house of the priest, when a hag burst out from the shelter of the woods and gave me the news.

“‘Ho, ho, Father Andrea, seekest thou thy little one? Nay, but thou shalt find her with the woodcutter. Thou wilt not forget that I have told thee. The Mother of God bless thee! She left with him at daybreak. I saw them sail. Thou wilt remember me--oh! there was jade’s blood in her veins--jade’s blood! What! do you not hear me?--I spit upon your face in hell!’

“I left her croaking; but the news was then round the island, and those who before had begged of me now came out from their holes to whine upon my misfortunes. Even the priest, who in his own way had wished well to her, could not help me. Christine’s flight was in some way a vindication of himself, a justification of that which he had done. It remained only for him to raise his hands in condemnation--to cry that the fault was none of his.

“‘Certainly,’ said he, ‘one who travels upon the devil’s road must come at last to the devil’s house. Did she not cross the yule-log at the feast of the Nativity? What else was to be expected, friend? She was a hussy from her birth up. Santa Maria! the words I have wasted upon her!’”

He spoke thus; but I was in no mood to war with him.

“‘Friend,’ said I, ‘there is a Gospel which teaches us that we love our neighbours as we love ourselves. If you believe in that, how great must your love of Christine be! Waste yet a few more words upon her, I beseech you, and tell me what you know of the woodlander who has carried her to the city?’

“‘That will I do,’ exclaimed he, ‘though little there is of good in the telling. The man is the son of Alvise, the steward of Jajce. His father would have made a priest of him and sent him to help the Catholics of the mountain towns. But he fled from the seminary, and has lived where he could, though chiefly upon a neighbouring island. A man of hot blood and temper, friend, neither Christian nor infidel--a savage, and yet not a savage, since he can read from the book and hold a pen in his hands. _Per Baccho!_ the devil hath paired them finely!’

“‘Is he not, then,’ I asked, ‘such a one as might win a woman’s love?’

“‘_Accidente_--is that a question to put to a priest? What is a woman’s whim to me that I should scan the face of every lout who comes lusting to the village?’

“‘Nay,’ said I, ‘but you must have seen him often if he lived as you say.’

“‘Oh, surely, I saw him often--a gloomy, silent man, who gave few civil words that he might hear few. Yet I have heard that he was the friend of the children here and was beloved of them.’

“‘And where, think you, must I seek him now?’

“He shrugged his shoulders, as though he pitied me.

“‘Where must you seek him? Nay, how shall I tell you? Am I his keeper? Be advised of me, and go back to your work in Pola. She would only mock you for your pains, as she has mocked me for mine.’

“This was his counsel, excellency, but his words fell on deaf ears. I had determined already that I would know how it fared with Christine. ‘At least,’ said I, ‘he shall stand before the altar with her; and if he will not do that--did she not tell me that they would make a hussar of him?’ Nay, I knew that he had drawn an unlucky number, and that I had only to raise my finger to send a corporal and troopers to the work. We are all soldiers in Austria, excellency. If Ugo Klun refused to answer the summons to serve his time with a regiment, a prison instead of a wife awaited him. I said that he should come to that if ill befell Christine; and with this rod in my hand I set out for Sebenico.”