With all his heart Antonio yearned to leap after her, to capture her like a shy creature of the woods, and to bear her back in triumph, seated on his shoulder as she had sat after the thunderstorm. But his limbs refused to obey. His feet seemed to have been rooted for centuries in the granite. He could not move an inch. Two cypresses, which they had often halted to admire, hid her from his sight. A groan, which he could not stifle, broke from the monk. There was one more point in the path, one only, where she could reappear. Would she turn round? Would she look back? As he waited, red-hot pincers seemed to be working and worming within him as if they would have his heart out of his body. He felt as if he were bleeding at every pore. She reappeared. She did not turn round. She did not look back. She was gone. BOOK VI "ITE, MISSA EST" I Having charged José to place himself at the disposal of Mrs. Baxter, Antonio took the road for Villa Branca about an hour after sunrise. Utter weariness had brought a few hours' sleep to his eyelids; but he felt unrested and unrefreshed. By the time he reached Santa Iria fatigue compelled him to hire a horse. While his mount was a-saddling the monk sat musing outside the wine-shop. What was Isabel doing? Of what was she thinking? Had she slept? Was she truly hating him at last? Would she come once more to the cascade? In answer to this last question he could hardly restrain himself from leaping on the half-ready horse and galloping off like a whirlwind to her presence. At the moment of his leaving the farm-house, two hours before, this all-day expedition to Villa Branca had seemed the height of prudence; but he suddenly saw it as the depth of cowardice and brutality. She would come to the cascade, in vain; and, later on, she would learn from José's lips how he had turned tail and run away. Antonio cringed and burned. A moment later, however, he knew that he had done right. She would not be at the cascade. "To-morrow," he said to himself, with a dull pain gnawing in his cold and heavy heart, "I shall see her for the last time. She will make no sign. She will say good-bye as if there has been nothing between us. Blessed Mother of God, help us to the end!" He took out Sir Percy's letter and perused it once more to distract his thoughts. He read: _Dear Senhor da Rocha,--_ _A post just to hand apprises me of your gentility to my daughter and her governess. The fact that I fully expected such courteous behavior on your part does not diminish my gratitude in respect of it; and I beg you to believe in the sincerity of my regret that I shall be unable to present my acknowledgments in person._ _I indulge the hope that a proposal which I am about to make may not be unacceptable to you. From our mutual friend Mr. Austin Crowberry I learn that you wished to purchase the abbey domain, but that your offers were unacceptable to the Minister of Finances._