was accustomed to say that she knew far too much
about love to fall into it. It was a reflection as serious as she could
make it; but Love is very apt to take such sayings amiss. Olimpia out of
love might make men miserable; in it, what might she not do? I am about
to tell you.

At Chioggia they were to await a shipload of merchants and pack-mules
expected from Ancona; but the wind proved counter when their barge had
weathered Malamocco, and that which dis-served them befriended the
northering freight. They found the train of beasts awaiting them,
saddled and loaded, restless to be off. Chioggia to Ferrara, by the road
they would go, is a handsome fifty miles.

In that company, as they neared, they observed a calm-eyed youth with a
delicate, girlish face, and wonderful shock of light gold hair all about
it. He stood alone on the mole, one knee bent, a hand to his hip, and
soberly surveyed the group on the barge. He made a charming little
picture there--seemed indeed posed for some such thing; he was
charmingly pretty himself, but for all that, he had a tragic touch upon
him, a droop of the lip, or the eyelid, perhaps. One could hardly say,
yet never miss it. Even Olimpia noticed the shadow across him. As they
touched--"Look, look, Bellaroba," she whispered, and nudged her
friend--"that boy! Did you ever see such a lovely child?"

Bellaroba drew a long breath. "I think he is as lovely as an angel," she
replied, her eyes fascinated. And her saying was equally true. He was
such a demure boy-angel, bright-haired, long and shapely in the limb, as
the painters and carvers loved to set in Madonna's court, careful about
her throne, or below the dais fiddling, or strumming lutes to charm away
her listlessness. Moreover, Angioletto was the name he went by, though
he had been christened Dominick. And he came from Borgo San
Sepolcro--far cry from windy Chioggia--a place among the brown Tuscan
hills, just where they melt into Umbria; and he was by trade a minstrel,
and going to Ferrara. Of so much, with many bows, he informed the two
girls, being questioned by Olimpia. But he looked at Bellaroba as he
spoke, and she listened the harder and looked the longer of the two.

Everything about him seemed to her altogether gracious, from the silky
floss of his gold hair to his proper legs, sheathed in scarlet to the
thighs. He was as soft and daintily coloured as a girl, had long curved
lashes to his grey eyes, a pathetic droop to his li