“Pray give me a little light on the matter which I have so much at heart,” said he; “if you know anything of Hilda, for Heaven’s sake, speak!”
Still they were silent; and the sculptor began to imagine that he must have mistaken the identity of these figures, there being such a multitude in similar costume. Yet there was no other Donatello, no other Miriam. He felt, too, that spiritual certainty which impresses us with the presence of our friends, apart from any testimony of the senses.
“You are unkind,” resumed he,--“knowing the anxiety which oppresses me, --not to relieve it, if in your power.”
The reproach evidently had its effect; for the contadina now spoke, and it was Miriam’s voice.
“We gave you all the light we could,” said she. “You are yourself unkind, though you little think how much so, to come between us at this hour. There may be a sacred hour, even in carnival time.”
In another state of mind, Kenyon could have been amused by the impulsiveness of this response, and a sort of vivacity that he had often noted in Miriam’s conversation. But he was conscious of a profound sadness in her tone, overpowering its momentary irritation, and assuring him that a pale, tear-stained face was hidden behind her mask.
Donatello here extended his hand,--not that which was clasping Miriam’s,--and she, too, put her free one into the sculptor’s left; so that they were a linked circle of three, with many reminiscences and forebodings flashing through their hearts. Kenyon knew intuitively that these once familiar friends were parting with him now.
“Farewell!” they all three said, in the same breath.
No sooner was the word spoken, than they loosed their hands; and the uproar of the Carnival swept like a tempestuous sea over the spot which they had included within their small circle of isolated feeling.
By this interview, the sculptor had learned nothing in reference to Hilda; but he understood that he was to adhere to the instructions already received, and await a solution of the mystery in some mode that he could not yet anticipate. Passing his hands over his eyes, and looking about him,--for the event just described had made the scene even more dreamlike than before,--he now found himself approaching that broad piazza bordering on the Corso, which has for its central object the sculptured column of Antoninus. It was not far from this vicinity that Miriam had bid him wait. Struggling onward as fast as the tide of merrymakers, setting strong against him, would permit, he was now beyond the Palazzo Colonna, and began to count the houses. The fifth was a palace, with a long front upon the Corso, and of stately height, but somewhat grim with age.