Also, he did not
show the least wish to be paid; he let them go away into the night with
no clamour at all. This, they could not help thinking, was a bad sign.
He asked for nothing because presently he was to get so much.
They came to some steps. The road ended abruptly in a church and
some descending steps. The man held the lantern low for them to see
the steps.
"San Salvatore?" said Mrs. Wilkins once again, very faintly,
before committing herself to the steps. It was useless to mention it
now, of course, but she could not go down steps in complete silence.
No mediaeval castle, she was sure, was ever built at the bottom of
steps.
Again, however, came the echoing shout--"Si, si--San Salvatore."
They descended gingerly, holding up their skirts just as if they
would be wanting them another time and had not in all probability
finished with skirts for ever.
The steps ended in a steeply sloping path with flat stone slabs
down the middle. They slipped a good deal on these wet slabs, and the
man with the lantern, talking loud and quickly, held them up. His way
of holding them up was polite.
"Perhaps," said Mrs. Wilkins in a low voice to Mrs. Arbuthnot,
"It is all right after all."
"We're in God's hands," said Mrs. Arbuthnot again; and again Mrs.
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