Colombe, whose eyes were fixed upon her book, did not at first observe the departure of her governess, and yet she was not reading, for there was a mist before her eyes. She was still excited and dizzy. All that she was capable of doing, and that she did instinctively, was to conceal her agitation, and repress the violent beating of her heart. Ascanio, too, was beside himself; he was excessively pained when he thought that Colombe desired to send him away, and insanely happy when he fancied that he could detect signs of emotion in his inamorata; and these sudden alternations of emotion in his enfeebled state transported and unnerved him at the same time. He was like one in a swoon, and yet his thoughts followed upon one another's heels with astounding rapidity and force. "She despises me! she loves me!" he said to himself almost in the same breath. He glanced at Colombe, silent and still, and the tears rolled down his cheeks, although he felt them not. Meanwhile a bird was singing in the branches overhead; the leaves were scarcely stirring in the gentle breeze. From the Augustine church the evening Angelus came floating softly downward through the air. Never was July evening more calm and peaceful. It was one of Nature's solemn moments, when the soul enters a new sphere,--one of those moments which seem twenty years, and which one remembers all his life. The two lovely children, so well suited to each other, had but to move their hands to join them, and yet it seemed as if there were a yawning gulf between them. After a moment or two Colombe raised her head:-- "You are weeping!" she cried, obeying an impulse stronger than her will. "I am not weeping," said Ascanio, falling back upon the bench; but his hands were wet with tears when he took them from his face. "It is true," he said, "I am weeping." "Why, what is the matter? I will call some one. Are you in pain?" "Only from my thoughts." "What thoughts, pray?" "I was thinking that perhaps it would have been better for me to die the other day." "Die! How old are you, pray, that you should talk thus of dying?" "Nineteen: but the age of unhappiness is a fit age for death." "And what of your kindred, who would weep for you?" said Colombe, unconsciously eager for a glimpse into the past of this life, of which she had a confused feeling that the future would be involved with her own. "I have no father or mother, and there is no one to weep for me save my master, Benvenuto." "Poor orphan!" "Yes, an orphan indeed! My father never loved me, and I lost my mother at ten years, just when I was beginning to understand her love and return it. My father--But what am I saying, and what are my father and my mother to you?" "Oh, yes! Go on, Ascanio." "Saints in heaven! you remember my name!" "Go on, go on," whispered Colombe, putting her hands before her face to hide her blushes.