which comes
flying from afar off, whatever his engagements elsewhere may be; the
bird which, having come, remains on the spot favoured by the worm,
singing sweet songs to charm it into a mood ripe for the gathering.

Such a bird was Paolo, and such--but perhaps it would be more gallant
not to carry the simile further, since even poetry could scarcely
license it.

It is enough to say, in proof of the proverb, that when the Boy and I
arrived at the villa in time for _dejeuner_, to which I had been
invited over night, we found Paolo with Gaeta, under the red umbrella,
unencumbered by any irrelevant Barons or Baronesses.

Gaeta was looking pale and a little frightened. Her dimples were in
abeyance, as if waiting to learn whether something had happened to
twinkle about, or something which would more likely extinguish them
forever. But the aeronaut might have invented an air-ship to take the
place of ordinary Channel traffic, so great with pride was he. He
appeared to have grown several inches in height, and to have
increased considerably in chest measurement, as he sprang from his
chair to welcome us, as if we had been long-lost brothers.

"Congratulate me," said he. "The Contessa has just consented to be my
wife."

Gaeta clutched the arm of her rustic seat with a tiny hand upon which
a new ring glittered, like a new star in the firmament. Her warm dark
eyes, eager, expectant, deliciously fearful, were on the Boy. If the
discarded favourite of yesterday had leaped to the throat of the
accepted lover of to-day (her "Whirlwind"), she would have screamed a
silvery little scream and implored him for _her_ sake to accept the
inevitable calmly; she would have given him a reproachful flash of the
eyes, to say, "Why didn't _you_ take me, instead of letting him carry
me away? What could I do, when you left me alone, at his mercy--I so
frail, he so big and strong?" Her glance would then have telegraphed
to Paolo, "You have won me and my love; you can afford to spare a
defeated rival who is desperate"; and perhaps she might even have
thrown me a crumb for auld flirtation's sake.

But the Boy did not, apparently, feel the least magnetic attraction
towards Paolo's throat, or any other vulnerable part of the aeronaut's
person. Nor did he stamp on the ground, crying upon earth to open and
swallow the master of the air. I, too, kept an unmoved front; but
then, being English, that might have been pardoned to my national
_sang-froid_