She could show on her
beautiful face the softness and the tenderness of an angel of light
while a demon reigned in her malignant heart. Why should she not
choose this way of keeping up appearances? She had betrayed her
friends, and sought her husband's death; but would she wish to have
her crime made manifest? Not she. It was for this, then, that she wept
and clung to the child-angel.
Such thoughts as these were not at all adapted to give comfort to his
mind, or make his rest refreshing. Soon, by such fancies, he kindled
anew his old rage, and his blood rose to fever heat, so that inaction
became no longer tolerable. He had rest enough. He started up, and
looked all around, and listened attentively. No sound arose and no
sight appeared which at all excited suspicion. He determined to set
forth once more, he scarcely knew where. He had a vague idea of
finding his way back to the road, so as to be able to assist the
ladies, together with another idea, equally ill defined, of coming
upon the brigands, finding the Italian, and watching for an
opportunity to wreak vengeance upon this assassin and his guilty
partner.
He drew his knife once more from a leathern sheath on the inside of
the breast of his coat, into which he had thrust it some time before,
and holding this he set forth, watchfully and warily. On the left side
of the precipice the ground sloped down, and at the bottom of this
there was a narrow valley. It seemed to him that this might be the
course of some spring torrent, and that by following its descent he
might come out upon some stream.
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