Had it taken them longer to climb to the spring's source than they supposed?
How fast the light was failing, the rich Italian light, impatient to be gone, claiming all or nothing! The girl began to be a little shaken with vague discomforts and terrors.
She had been accustomed to wander about the lake of Albano by herself, and to make friends with the peasants.

But after all the roads would not be so closely patrolled by _carabinieri_ if all was quite as safe as in Vermont or Middlesex; and there were plenty of disquieting stories current among the English visitors, even among the people themselves.

Was it not only a month since a carriage containing some German royalties had been stopped and robbed by masked peasants on the Rocca di Papa road?
Had not an old resident in Rome told her, only the day before, that when he walked about these lake paths he always filled his pockets with cigars and divested them of money, in order that the charcoal-burners might love him without robbing him?
Had not friends of theirs going to Cori and Ninfa been followed by mounted police all the way?
These things weighed little with her as she wandered in broad daylight about the roads near the villa.

But now she was quite alone, the night was coming, and the place seemed very desolate.
But of course they would be back directly! Why not walk to meet them?
It was the heat and slackness of the day which had unnerved her.

Perhaps, too, unknown to herself!--the stir of new emotions and excitements in a deep and steadfast nature.
She had marked the path they took, and she made her way to it.