Once, as they passed under the window, she heard her uncle say sharply: 'Don't be a fool, Sybert. It will make a nasty story if it gets out--and nothing's gained.'
She did not hear Sybert's reply, but she saw his angry gesture as he flung away the end of his cigar. The men paused by the farther end of the terrace and stood for several minutes arguing in lowered tones. Then, to Marcia's amazement, Sybert leaped the low parapet by the ilex grove and struck out across the fields, while her uncle came back across the terrace alone, entered the house, and closed the door. She sat up straight with a quickly beating heart. What was the matter? Could they have quarrelled? Was Sybert going to the station? Surely he would not walk. She leaned out of the window and looked after him, a black speck in the moonlit wheat-field. No, he was going toward Castel Vivalanti. Why Castel Vivalanti at this time of the night? Had it anything to do with Gervasio?--or perhaps Tarquinio, the baker's son? She recalled her uncle's words: 'Don't be a fool. It will make a nasty story if it gets out.' Perhaps people's suspicions against him were true, after all. She thought of his look that night in the train. What was behind it? And then she thought of the picture of him in the carriage with the little boy in his arms. A man who was so kind to children could not be bad at heart. And yet, if he were all that her uncle had thought him, why did he have so many enemies--and so many doubtful friends?
The breeze had grown cold, and she rose with a quick shiver and went to bed. She lay a long time with wide-open eyes watching the muslin curtains sway in the wind. She thought again of Paul Dessart's words in the warm, sleepy, sunlit cloister; of the little crowd of ragamuffins chasing the dog; of her long, silent ride with Sybert; of the moonlit gateway of Castel Vivalanti, with the dark, high walls towering above. Her thoughts were growing hazy and she was almost asleep when, mingled with a half-waking dream, she heard footsteps cross the terrace and the hall door open softly.
MARCIA was awakened the next morning by Bianca knocking at the door, with the information that Gervasio wished to get up, and that, as his clothes were very ragged, she had taken the liberty the night before of throwing them away.