Eliza then became uncharacteristically shy. Now, by this time they were several days out of Vienna. She had taken off the wounded-officer disguise and was sitting in the saddle with a blanket wrapped around her, covering the tent she'd been wearing the first time Jack had seen her. From time to time she'd offer to dismount and walk, but she was barefoot, and Jack didn't want to be slowed down. Her head, anyway, projected from a vast whorl of fabric, and Jack could therefore turn round and look at it anytime he chose. Generally he didn't, because he knew that only trouble could come of paying undue attention to that visage – its smooth symmetry, its fine set of teeth, and all of those ever-so-important Feelings flickering across it, supple and quick and mesmerizing as fire-light. But at this particular moment he did turn round to look, because her silence was so sudden that he supposed she'd been punched out of the saddle by a stray cannon-ball. She was there, gazing at some other travelers just ahead of them: four nuns.