, and at the end she
said, gently: "Shall we go this morning?"

"Let the doctor rest this morning, Nannie," her father interrupted,
whimsically, but with what Lanfear knew to be an inner yielding to her
will. "Or if you won't let _him_, let _me_. I don't want to go anywhere
this morning."

Lanfear thought that he did not wish her to go at all, and hoped that by
the afternoon she would have forgotten Possana. She sighed, but in her
sigh there was no concession. Then, with the chance of a returning
drowse to save him from openly thwarting her will, he merely suggested:
"There's plenty of time in the afternoon; the days are so long now; and
we can get the sunset from the hills."

"Yes, that will be nice," she said, but he perceived that she did not
assent willingly; and there was an effect of resolution in the readiness
with which she appeared dressed for the expedition after luncheon. She
clearly did not know where they were going, but when she turned to
Lanfear with her look of entreaty, he had not the heart to join her
father in any conspiracy against her. He beckoned the carriage which had
become conscious in its eager driver from the moment she showed herself
at the hotel door, and they set out.

When they had left the higher level of the hotel and began their clatter
through the long street of the town, Lanfear noted that she seemed to
feel as much as himself the quaintness of the little city, rising on one
hand, with its narrow alleys under successive arches between the high,
dark houses, to the hills, and dropping on the other to sea from the
commonplace of the principal thoroughfare, with its pink and white and
saffron hotels and shops. Beyond the town their course lay under villa
walls, covered with vines and topped by pavilions, and opening finally
along a stretch of the old Cornice road.

"But this," she said, at a certain point, "is where we were yesterday!"

"This is where the doctor was yesterday," her father said, behind his
cigar.

"And wasn't I with you?" she asked Lanfear.

He said, playfully: "To-day you are. I mustn't be selfish and have you
every day."

"Ah, you are laughing at me; but I know I was here yesterday."

Her father set his lips in patience, and Lanfear did not insist.

They had halted at this point because, across a wide valley on the
shoulder of an approaching height, the ruined village of Possana showed,
and lower down and nearer the seat the new town which its people had
b