blackbirds, thrushes, with their young--the plumpest, clumsiest,
ruffle-feathered little blunderers, at the age ingrat, just beginning to
fly, a terrible anxiety to their parents--and there were also (I regret
to own) a good many rowdy sparrows. There were bees and bumblebees;
there were brilliant, dangerous-looking dragonflies; there were
butterflies, blue ones and white ones, fluttering in couples; there were
also (I am afraid) a good many gadflies--but che volete? Who minds
a gadfly or two in Italy? On the other side of the house there were
fig-trees and peach-trees, and artichokes holding their heads high in
rigid rows; and a vine, heavy with great clusters of yellow grapes, was
festooned upon the northern wall.

The morning air was ineffably sweet and keen--penetrant, tonic, with
moist, racy smells, the smell of the good brown earth, the smell of
green things and growing things. The dew was spread over the grass like
a veil of silver gossamer, spangled with crystals. The friendly country
westward, vineyards and white villas, laughed in the sun at the Gnisi,
sulking black in shadow to the east. The lake lay deep and still, a
dark sapphire. And away at the valley's end, Monte Sfiorito, always
insubstantial-seeming, showed pale blue-grey, upon a sky in which still
lingered some of the flush of dawn.

It was a surprisingly jolly garden, true enough. But though Peter
remained in it all day long--though he haunted the riverside, and cast
a million desirous glances, between the trees, and up the lawns, towards
Castel Ventirose--he enjoyed no briefest vision of the Duchessa di
Santangiolo.

Nor the next day; nor the next.

"Why does n't that old dowager ever come down and look after her river?"
he asked Marietta. "For all the attention she gives it, the water might
be undermining her property on both sides."

"That old dowager--?" repeated Marietta, blank.

"That old widow woman--my landlady--the Duchessa Vedova di Santangiolo."

"She is not very old--only twenty-six, twenty-seven," said Marietta.

"Don't try to persuade me that she is n't old enough to know better,"
retorted Peter, sternly.

"But she has her guards, her keepers, to look after her property," said
Marietta.

"Guards and keepers are mere mercenaries. If you want a thing well done,
you should do it yourself," said Peter, with gloomy sententiousness.

On Sunday he went to the little grey rococo parish church. There were
two Masses, one at eight o'