Our entertainment, however, was not destined to go further. For at the
moment in which I puzzled over her words and sought to attach to them some
intelligent meaning, there broke from behind us a scream that flung us
apart, as startled as if we had been conscious indeed of guilt.
We looked round to find that it had been uttered by my mother. Not ten
yards away she stood, a tall black figure against the grey background of
the lichened wall, with Giojoso in attendance and Rinolfo slinking behind
his father, leering.
CHAPTER V
REBELLION
The sight of my mother startled me more than I can say. It filled me with
a positive dread of things indefinable. Never before had I seen her coldly
placid countenance so strangely disordered, and her unwonted aspect it must
have been that wrought so potently upon me.
No longer was she the sorrowful spectre, white-faced, with downcast eyes
and level, almost inanimate, tones. Her cheeks were flushed unnaturally,
her lips were quivering, and angry fires were smouldering in her deep-set
eyes.
Swiftly she came down to us, seeming almost to glide over the ground. Not
me she addressed, but poor Luisina; and her voice was hoarse with an awful
anger.
"Who are you, wench?" quoth she. "What make you here in Mondolfo?"
Luisina had risen and stood swaying there, very white and with averted
eyes, her hands clasping and unclasping.
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