Lucy thought of the ruined frescoes in the disused chapel, of the faces of saints and angels looking out into the stillness.
Then she mounted some steps to the road, and turned downwards towards the forest that crept up round them on all sides.
Ah! was there yet another portion of the convent ?--a wing running at right angles to the main building in which they were established, and containing some habitable rooms?
In the furthest window of all was a light, and a figure moving across it.

A tall black figure--surely a priest?
Yes!--as the form came nearer to the window, seen from the back, Lucy perceived distinctly the tonsured head and the soutane.
How strange! She had heard nothing from the _massaja_ of any other tenant.
And this tall gaunt figure had nothing in common with the little smiling _parroco_ she had seen in the crowd.
She moved on, wondering.
Oh, those woods! How they sank, like great resting clouds below her, to the shining line of the river, and rose again on the further side! They were oak woods, and spoke strangely to Lucy of the American and English north.
Yet, as she came nearer, the moon shone upon delicate undergrowth of heath and arbutus, that chid her fancy back to the 'Saturnian land.' And beyond all, the blue mountains, aetherially light, like dreams on the horizon; and above all, the radiant serenity of the sky.
Ah! there spoke the nightingales, and that same melancholy note of the little brown owl which used to haunt the olive grounds of Marinata.

Lucy held her breath.

The tears rushed into her eyes--tears of memory, tears of longing.
But she drove them back.

Standing on a little cleared space beside the road that commanded the whole night scene, she threw herself into the emotion and poetry which could be yielded to without remorse, without any unnerving of the will.