"I rejoice to meet you," said Kenyon. But they looked at him through the
eye-holes of their black masks, without answering a word.
"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.
"Forgive me!" said he.
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.