She had spent the whole night gazing at the place where he lived. He was not even there at that moment: he had gone away for two days to a grain-fair in the town of Vendraminõ, but she recalled with ecstasy their meetings by the side of the low green river, their hours in the wild flowering gardens of the palace, the lovely evenings when she had stolen out to see him come through the maize and canes, the fire-flies all alight about his footsteps. Sleepless but languid, weary and yet restless, she had thrown herself on her bed without taking off her clothes, and in the dark, as the bells for the first mass had rung over the shadowy fields. She had for the first time fallen into a heavy sleep, haunted by dreams of her lover, which made her stretch her arms to him in the empty air, and murmur, sleeping, wild and tender words. She had been still on her bed, when the men of the mill had roused her, beating at the chamber door and crying to her,-- "Generosa, Generosa, Padrona! get up! The master is murdered, and lying dead at the church!" She had been lying dreaming of Falko, and feeling in memory his kisses on her mouth, when those screams had come through the stillness of the early daybreak, through the music of the blackbirds piping in the cherry-boughs outside her windows. She had sprung from off her bed. She had huddled on some decenter clothing, and, bursting through the detaining hands of the henchmen and neighbors, had fled, as fast as her trembling limbs could bear her, to the church. "Is it true? Is it true?" she cried, with white lips, to Gesualdo. He looked at her with a long, inquiring regard: then, without a word, he drew the linen off the dead face of her husband, and pointed to it. She, strong as a colt and full of life as a young tree, fell headlong on the stone floor in a dead swoon. The people gathered about the door-way and watched her suspiciously and without compassion. There was no one there who did not believe her to be the murderess. No one except Gesualdo. In that one moment when he had looked into her eyes he had felt that she was guiltless. He called Candida to her and left her, and closed the door on the curious, cruel, staring eyes of the throng without. The people murmured: what title had he more than they to command and direct in this matter? The murder was a precious feast to them: why should he defraud them of their rights? "He knows she is guilty," they muttered, "and he wants to screen her and give her time to recover herself and to arrange what story she shall tell."