Nobili paused to look at her.  Miser-like, he would pause to gloat upon his treasure!  How well a golden glory would become that sunny head!  She only wanted wings, he thought, to make an angel of her.  Enrica’s face was bent.  Her thoughts, far away, were lost in a delicious world, neither earth nor heaven—­a world with Nobili!  What mysteries were there, what unknown joys, or sharper pains perchance, she neither knew nor cared.  She would share all with him!  In a moment the place she stood on was darkened.  Something stood between her and the sun.  She looked up and gave a little cry, then stood motionless, the color going and coming upon her cheek.  One bound, and Nobili was beside her.  He strained her to him with a passion that robbed him of all words.  Scarcely knowing what he did, he grasped the tangled meshes of her silken hair and covered them with kisses.  Then he raised her soft face in his hand, and gazed upon it long and fervently.

Enrica’s plaintive eyes melted as they met his.  She quivered in his embrace.  Her whole soul went out to him as she lay within his arms.  He bent his head—­their trembling lips clung together in one long kiss.  Then the little golden head drooped upon his breast, and nestled there, as if at last at home.  Never before had Enrica’s dainty form yielded beneath his touch.  Before, he had but clasped her little hand, or pressed her dress, or stolen a hasty kiss on those truant locks of hers.  Now Enrica was his own, his very own.  The blood shot up like fire over his face.  His eyes devoured her.  As she lay encircled in his arms, a burning blush crimsoned her cheeks.  She turned away her face, and feebly tried to loosen herself from him.  Nobili only pressed her closer.  He would not let her go.

“Do not turn from me, Enrica,” he softly murmured.  “Would you rob me of the rapture of my first embrace?”

There was a passionate tremor in his voice that re vibrated within her from head to foot.  Her flushed cheek grew pale as she listened.

“Heavens! how I have longed for you!  How I have longed for you sitting at home!  And you so near!”

“And I have longed for you,” whispered Enrica, blushing again redder than summer roses.—­Enrica was too simple to dissemble.—­“O Nobili!”—­and she raised her dreamy eyes upward to his, then dropped them again before the fire of his glance—­“you cannot tell how lonely I have been.  Oh!  I have suffered so much; I thought I should have died.”

“My own Enrica, that is gone and past.  Now we shall never part.  I have won you for my wife.  Even the marchesa must own this.  Last night the old life died out as the smoke from that old tower.  To-day you have waked to a new life with me.”

Again Nobili’s arms stole round her; again he sealed the sacrament of love with a fervid kiss.

Enrica trembled from head to foot—­a scared look came over her.  The rush of passionate joy, coming upon the terrors of the past night, was more than she could bear.  Nobili watched the change.