CHAPTER XIIIAngelica still wrote, though in a room which, for the moment, had no occupant but herself. It had an aspect of leisured learning, of wealth and secure peace. The high shelves, laden with calf and vellum-bound volumes, lettered most often in vermilion or gold, were in shadow, but the high sunlight of a morning that neared its noon patterned the softly carpeted floor through windows that showed a few white cumulus clouds moving majestically across the deep blue of the summer sky.
But as she wrote she had heard for the past two hours the low thunder of distant guns. It came from the south, where the Turkish army advanced on a wide front and was opposed by the Maltese militia and as many knights as there were good horses to mount, or the Grand Master would allow to go out of the l
