nd would now accept Franco in place of a son.

* * * * *

In seven hours then!

The window overlooked the landing-place and the strip of garden in front
of the villa, on the lake side. When he first fell in love, Franco used
to stand there and watch for the coming of a certain boat, from which
would spring a slim little person, as light as air, but who never, never
looked towards his window. At last, one day he had gone down to meet
her, and she had waited a moment before jumping out, that she might
accept his helping hand--which, indeed, was most unnecessary. Down there
in the garden he had given her a flower, for the first time, the
sweet-smelling flower of the _Mandevilia suaveolens_. Down there, on
another occasion, he had cut his finger rather deeply with his penknife,
while gathering a little branch of roses for her, and she, by the
anxiety she displayed, had given him a sweet proof of her love. How many
excursions to the solitary slopes of Monte Bisgnago, on the other side,
he had made with her and with other friends, before his grandmother
found out! How many lunches and suppers at the little inn at Doi! Franco
would come home with the sweetness of the many glances exchanged still
lingering in his heart, and shutting himself up in his room, would
recall them all, revelling in them in memory. These first emotions of
his love now rushed into his mind, not one by one, but all together,
from the waters and from the gloomy shores, where his fixed gaze seemed
to lose itself in the shadowy past rather than in the misty present.
Thus, as he neared the goal, he thought of the first steps he had taken
on this long road, of the unforeseen incidents, of the aspect of this
much-longed-for union, so different in reality from what it had appeared
in his dreams. He looked back upon the time of the _mandevilia_ and the
roses, of the excursions on the lake and among the hills. Certainly, at
that time, he did not dream he would attain his object thus, secretly,
and surrounded by so many difficulties, so much pain. Still, he thought
that if the wedding had taken place openly, with the customary proem of
official ceremonies, of contracts, congratulations, visits, and dinners,
all this would have been even more wearisome and repugnant to his love
than the opposition he had met with.

He was aroused by the voice of the prefect, calling to him from the
garden, to announce the departure of the Carabelli