partly because she fears to get a rogue in his place. She does not
guess how carefully Silvestro has hid the truth from her; she would
not give him credit for the power of concealing any thing.

The sindaco having sent a boy up to Silvestro's house with the
marchesa's message, "that he is to attend her," the steward comes
hurrying down through the terraces cut in the steep ground behind the
villa--broad, stately terraces, with balustrades, and big empty vases,
and statues, and grand old lemon-trees set about. Great flights of
marble steps cross and recross, rest on a marble stage, and then
recross again. Here and there a pointed cypress-tree towers upward
like a green pyramid in a desert of azure sky. Bright-leaved autumn
flowers lie in masses on the rich brown earth, and dainty streamlets
come rushing downward in little sculptured troughs.

What a dismal sigh Silvestro gave when he got the marchesa's message,
and knew that she had arrived! How he wrung his hands and looked
hopelessly upward to heaven with vacant, colorless eyes, the big
heat-drops gathering on his bald, wrinkled forehead! He has so much to
tell her!--It must be told too; he can hide the truth no longer. She
will be sure to ask to see the accounts. Alas! alas! what will his
mistress say? For a moment Silvestro gazes wistfully at the mountains
all around with a vacant stare. Oh, that the mountains would
cover him! Anyway, there are caves and holes, he thinks, where the
marchesa's wrath would never reach him; caves and holes where he might
live hidden for years, cared for by those who love him. Shall he flee,
and never see his mistress's dark, dreadful eyes again? Folly!

Silvestro rouses himself. He resolves to meet his fate like a man,
whatever that may be. He will not forsake his duty.--So Silvestro
comes hurrying down by the terraces, upon which the shadows fall, to
the house--a gray mediaeval tower, machicolated and turreted--the only
remains of a strong fortress that in feudal times guarded these passes
from Modena into Tuscany. To this gray tower is attached a large
modern dwelling--a villa--painted of a dull-yellow color, with an
overlapping roof, the walls pierced full of windows. The tower, villa,
and the line of cliffs on which they stand, face east and west; on
one side the forest and Corellia crowning a rocky height, on the other
side mountains, with a deep abyss at the foot of the cliffs, yawning
between. It is the marchesa's pleasure to