Now, however, Beatrice felt that if it had
all been arranged for her, she would have been satisfied, but that since
San Miniato had played something very like a comedy, she would refuse to
be duped by it. She was very bitter against him in the first revulsion
of feeling and treated him more hardly in her thoughts than he, perhaps,
deserved.
And there he was, up there by the table, telling her mother of his
success. Her blood rose in her cheeks at the thought and she stamped her
foot upon the rock out of sheer anger at herself, at him, at everything
and everybody. Then she moved on.
Ruggiero was standing at the edge of the water looking out to sea. The
moonlight silvered his white face and fair beard and accentuated the
sharp black line where his sailor's cap crossed his forehead. Wild and
angry emotions chased each other from his heart to his brain and back
again, firing his overwrought nerves and heated blood, as the flame runs
along a train of powder. He heard a light step behind him and turned
suddenly. Beatrice was close upon him.
"Is that you, Ruggiero," she asked, for she had seen him with his back
turned and had not recognised him at first.
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