The ducal carriage already waited at the steps. There came out first from the great portal a little group of her Highness’s women, and he saw that one of them was Fanchette. At that very moment a surge of the crowd drove him forward and almost from his feet, so that to save himself he had to “rush” two or three of the steps, and to pause an instant to recover his balance before re-descending them. In that second, the girl, looking round, was aware of him, and bending immediately, as if to withdraw her skirts from his neighbourhood, whispered: “At four o’clock, on the Mezzo bridge.” The next moment, hustled by the guards, he was down again, and near his former position. But the slight disturbance had attracted the attention of a young lady just issuing from the church on her father’s arm. One instant she turned her eyes and saw him; the next, with a little swerve, momentary, scarce perceptible, she was going down the steps to the carriage. CHAPTER XXI. ACROSS THE BRIDGE With the afternoon the town had resumed its normal aspect; the shops were re-opened; the stream of grave and frivolous circulated with its wonted restlessness and volubility. Only the ashes of a Lenten disposition seemed to have survived from the morning, the human traffic going sad-suited and with a mock attempt at seriousness in its demeanour. Still, the sky was blue, the little river sparkled, and the harnesses of the mules would not stop tinkling for all the enforced sobriety of the occasion. A veiled young lady, coming from the direction of the Palazzo della Pilotta, hesitated an instant before setting foot on the crowded thoroughfare of the Ponte di Mezzo, and then made up her mind and went boldly forward. Half-way across, she just signed to a loiterer who stood leaning against the parapet, whereupon, detaching himself from his position, the man accompanied her footsteps, neither of them speaking a word. Making westward from the bridge--which continued across the water the main artery of traffic, that ancient Via Aemilia which exactly bisected the town--they presently reached a less frequented quarter; and, coming after a time to the open spaces neighbouring on the Barriera d’Azeglio, the girl at length, with a shrug of resignation, slackened her pace, and in the same moment invited her companion to speak. “To have selected for a meeting place,” she exclaimed, “the most populous spot in the city! Bah! But I had no time to think.” “What does it matter, Fanchette?” She stopped, and looked at him, with a little fretful stamp of her foot. “Are you tired of life that you say so?” “Is my life in danger?” “What do you suppose--here, in Parma?” “I do not trouble myself to suppose anything.” “You are too courageous to think of yourself, is it not? That would be very fine, if only sometimes you would think of other people.”