'
CHAPTER VIII
It wanted but a few days now to their parting. Miss Dorothy had taken
Delfina to Sienna, and then returned to help her mistress in the last
and most trying arrangements and to accompany her on the journey. In the
mother's house in Sienna the truth of the story was not known, and
Delfina of course knew nothing. Maria had merely written that Don Manuel
had been suddenly recalled by his government. And she made ready to
go--to leave these rooms, so full of cherished things, to the hands of
the public auctioneers who had already drawn up the inventory and fixed
the date of the sale for the 20th of June, at ten in the morning.
On the evening of the 9th, as she was leaving Andrea, she missed a
glove. While looking for it she came upon a volume of Shelley, the one
which Andrea had lent her in Schifanoja, the dear and affecting book in
which, before the excursion to Vicomile, she had underlined the words
'And forget me, for I can _never_
Be thine.'
She took up the book with visible emotion and turned over the pages till
she came to the one which bore the mark of her underlining.
'_Never!_' she murmured with a shake of the head. 'You remember? And
hardly eight months have passed since.'
She pensively turned over a few more leaves and read other verses.
'He is our poet,' she went on.
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