'
The sun rose, the household were all stirring, and many of them
abroad; the common routine of domestic duty seemed, by some general
yet not expressed understanding, to have ceased. The ladies descended
below at a very early hour, and went forth into the valley, once the
happy valley. What was to be its future denomination? Vicenzo returned
from the bay, and he contrived to return with cheering intelligence.
The master of a felucca who, in consequence of the squall had put in
at Lerici, and in the evening dropped down to Spezzia, had met an open
boat an hour before he reached Sarzana, and was quite confident that,
if it had put into port, it must have been, from the speed at which it
was going, a great distance down the coast. No wrecks had been heard
of in the neighbourhood. This intelligence, the gladsome time of day,
and the non-arrival of Captain Cadurcis, which according to their mood
was always a circumstance that counted either for good or for evil,
and the sanguine feelings which make us always cling to hope,
altogether reassured our friends. Venetia dismissed from her mind the
dark thought which for a moment had haunted her in the noon of night;
and still it was a suspense, a painful, agitating suspense, but only
suspense that yet influenced them.
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