And “deadly earnest” was written on his white face, set teeth, and rigid, knotted brow as plainly as it could well be.
Then, in a silence that neither of the two men were in the mood to break, they made the rest of the distance that lay between them and the sharp curve of the rocks.
When they rounded that curve Clive saw in a moment what Sefton had meant.
The narrow mountain pass came to an end there, and the path wound steadily downwards into a dark, well-wooded ravine, in which lay hidden all that called itself the village of Alta Lauria. High over this ravine, on the farther side, straight in front of them, stood the Palazzo, crushed and squeezed, as it were, into a nest of whitely-gleaming rocks.
Higher still, over the Palazzo itself, hung a great, white, staring moon, cutting into sharp relief against the lucent night sky every fantastic crag and turret of the uppermost heights, and piling its shadows upon the dark, wooded ravine, till it showed like the Valley of the Shadow of Death itself.
And the path at the head of which Sefton and Clive now stood led straight into it.
A bare, pebbly path it ran for about twenty yards or so, then it sloped gradually downwards into what seemed a wood of ilex and wild olive, and where the only road appeared to be that which wayfarers themselves had trampled down into the semblance of one.
Ditta brought his mules to a standstill, to ask if the gentlemen would like to mount, or would they rather walk through the wood, and mount at the farther end.
“How far does this wood go—how many kilos?” questioned Clive, trying to gauge the danger that might threaten now.
The man replied that it was something over two kilos; that it was easier to walk it, as there was so much scrubby underwood, in which the mules were apt to get entangled. On the other side the road grew rocky and steep once more, and then it might be as well to mount.
“We’ll walk,” said Sefton, with great decision. “Mules would be no good to us in that tangle.”
The muleteers went on ahead once more, with their cracking whips, and “holas,” and “huepes,” urging on their tired animals, till together they disappeared amid the shadows of the ilexes and wild olives.
Was it fancy, Clive asked himself, or did there come, together with the shouts and cracking of whips, a sound of movement, of trampling from out the shadowy depths of the wood, that seemed something other than the tramp of the mules and the muleteers?
Sefton heard it, not a doubt. With a sudden, impetuous bound he dashed ahead of Clive some half-dozen yards, then came to a standstill.
The moon lighted up his set, white face as he turned it towards the edge of the wood whence the sound had seemed to come.
“Here, you fellows in hiding there!” he cried in Italian, in a loud, ringing voice; “I’m a soldier, and an Englishman! If you want my life put a bullet into me! Don’t rush out at me with your confounded butchers’ knives as if I were a sheep!”
Swift and sharp there came the answer he expected; the click of a rifle, the whizzing of a bullet, and Sefton Culvers fell a dead man at Clive’s very feet.
XXIV
“Come into the garden, Ida, just for ten minutes, before it gets dark,” said Juliet, leading the way, as she spoke, through the open French window into the shadowy garden. “Oh, father and Peggy will entertain each other right enough; one will go to sleep in one corner, and one in the other, I dare say. I’ve ever so much to say to you. I hardly know where to begin.”
It was Ida’s first day at home after a lengthened absence. Two years had passed since the tragedy in the Calabrian mountains, which had made her widow, and had avenged Violante’s broken heart.
And the whole of those two years, with but brief interludes, Ida had passed in Devon with Sefton’s aged mother, ministering to her as a daughter might, and doing her utmost to render her closing days days of peace, if not of happiness. Not until the aged sufferer had passed away to her rest did Ida consider her obligations to her at an end, and return to her home.
In all respects, during those two years, Ida had carried herself as a widow might—a widow, too, whose conscience was not altogether clear of remorse.
For, reason with herself as she might, she could not divest her mind of the idea that she herself had been instrumental in bringing about her husband’s death.
The terrible night when Francesca sternly summoned her to the gates of the Palazzo “to receive her husband,” and she stood there to see his lifeless body brought in by the two muleteers, seemed printed on her memory in colours that could never fade.
Her remorse had preyed upon her heavily, and had sent her down into Devon to lead a life from which she rigorously excluded all the fun and frolic in which hitherto she and Juliet had gone shares.
And not once during the whole of those two years had she and Clive met or exchanged a letter.
At Naples, by her wish, they had parted with scarce a word of leave-taking. She had gone with her husband’s body straight to his home in Devon; and he had remained in Italy,
