Ferris stepped back again into the shadow of the tree from which he had just emerged, and clung to its trunk lest he should fall. Another seemed to creep out of the court in his person, and totter across the white glare of the campo and down the blackness of the calle. In the intersected spaces where the moonlight fell, this alien, miserable man saw the figure of a priest gliding on before him. XVI. Florida swiftly mounted the terrace steps, but she stopped with her hand on the door, panting, and turned and walked slowly away to the end of the terrace, drying her eyes with dashes of her handkerchief, and ordering her hair, some coils of which had been loosened by her flight. Then she went back to the door, waited, and softly opened it. Her mother was not in the parlor where she had left her, and she passed noiselessly into her own room, where some trunks stood open and half-packed against the wall. She began to gather up the pieces of dress that lay upon the bed and chairs, and to fold them with mechanical carefulness and put them in the boxes. Her mother’s voice called from the other chamber, “Is that you, Florida?” “Yes, mother,” answered the girl, but remained kneeling before one of the boxes, with that pale green robe in her hand which she had worn on the morning when Ferris had first brought Don Ippolito to see them. She smoothed its folds and looked down at it without making any motion to pack it away, and so she lingered while her mother advanced with one question after another; “What are you doing, Florida? Where are you? Why didn’t you come to me?” and finally stood in the doorway. “Oh, you’re packing. Do you know, Florida, I’m getting very impatient about going. I wish we could be off at once.” A tremor passed over the young girl and she started from her languid posture, and laid the dress in the trunk. “So do I, mother. I would give the world if we could go to-morrow!” “Yes, but we can’t, you see. I’m afraid we’ve undertaken a great deal, my dear. It’s quite a weight upon _my_ mind, already; and I don’t know what it _will_ be. If we were free, now, I should say, go to-morrow, by all means. But we couldn’t arrange it with Don Ippolito on our hands.” Florida waited a moment before she replied. Then she said coldly, “Don Ippolito is not going with us, mother.” “Not going with us? Why”-- “He is not going to America. He will not leave Venice; he is to remain a priest,” said Florida, doggedly.