"For how on earth can
the poor creature, if he be really still alive, have remained in
those clothes for a year and travelled half across Europe in them?"
"It is monstrous. And yet there he stood and I saw him as clearly as
I see you. He was certainly not in my thoughts. I was thinking of
nothing and talking to Assunta about the silkworms, when suddenly he
appeared, not twenty yards away."
"What did you do?"
"I made a fool of myself," confessed Jenny. "Assunta says that I
cried out very loud and then toppled over and fainted. When I came
round there was nothing to be seen."
"The point is then: did Assunta see him also?"
"That was the first thing I found out. I hoped she had not. That
would have saved the situation in a way and proved it was only some
picture of the mind as you suggest. But she saw him clearly
enough--so clearly that she described a red man not Italian, but
English or German. She heard him, too. When I cried out he leaped
away into the woods."
"Did he see and recognize you?"
"That I do not know.
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