In another moment they
were face to face.
He stopped a few paces from her, and eyed her steadily in dead
silence. She still crouched against the summer-house, and still
with one hand mechanically kept her hold of the dog. It was well
for the priest that she did so. Scarammuccia's formidable teeth
were in full view, his shaggy coat was bristling, his eyes were
starting, his growl had changed from the surly to the savage
note; he was ready to tear down, not Father Rocco only, but all
the clergy in Pisa, at a moment's notice.
"You have been listening," said the priest, calmly. "I see it in
your face. You have heard all."
She could not answer a word; she could not take her eyes from
him. There was an unnatural stillness in his face, a steady,
unrepentant, unfathomable despair in his eyes that struck her
with horror. She would have given worlds to be able to rise to
her feet and fly from his presence.
"I once distrusted you and watched you in secret," he said,
speaking after a short silence, thoughtfully, and with a strange,
tranquil sadness in his voice. "And now, what I did by you, you
do by me. You put the hope of your life once in my hands. Is it
because they were not worthy of the trust that discovery and ruin
overtake me, and that you are the instrument of the retribution?
Can this be the decree of Heaven--or is it nothing but the blind
justice of chance?"
He looked upward, doubtingly, to the lustrous sky above him, and
sighed.
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