ar,
"he must have gone off for a walk after he left you. Did you not see
which way he turned?"

"How could I from the place where I stood?" asked Aurora in reply. "As
soon as he had turned behind the bank it was impossible to say which way
he had gone."

"Of course," assented Folco. "I understand that."

Marcello had not come home, and Aurora was sorry that she had teased him
into a temper and had then allowed him to go away. It was not good for
him, delicate as he was, to go for a long walk in such weather without
any breakfast, and she felt distinctly contrite as she ate her roll in
silence and drank her coffee, on the sheltered side of the cottage,
under the verandah. The Signora Corbario had not appeared yet, but the
Contessa was already out. As a rule the Signora preferred to have her
coffee in her room, as if she were in town. For some time no one spoke.

"Had we not better send Ercole to find Marcello?" the Contessa asked at
last.

"I had to send Ercole to Porto d'Anzio this morning," Corbario answered.
"I took the opportunity, because I knew there would be no quail with
this wind."

"Marcello will come in when he is hungry," said Aurora, rather sharply,
because she really felt sorry.

But Marcello did not come in.

Soon after eight o'clock his mother appeared on the verandah. Folco
dropped his newspaper and hastened to make her comfortable in her
favourite chair. Though she was not strong, she was not an invalid, but
she was one of those women whom it seems natural to help, to whom men
bring cushions, and with whom other women are always ready to
sympathise. If one of Fra Angelico's saints should walk into a modern
drawing-room all the men would fall over each other in the scramble to
make her comfortable, and all the women would offer her tea and ask her
if she felt the draught.

The Signora looked about, expecting to see her son.

"Marcello has not come in," said Folco, understanding. "He seems to have
gone for a long walk."

"I hope he has put on his thick boots," answered the Signora, in a
thoughtful tone. "It is very wet."

She asked why Folco was not with him shooting, and was told that there
were no birds in such weather. She had never understood the winds, nor
the points of the compass, nor why one should see the new moon in the
west instead of in the east. Very few women do, but those who live much
with men generally end by picking up a few useful expressions, a little
phrase-book of ja