een, prosaically enough, the _Maria_. But since the advent
of the girl all this had been changed. The _Farfalla_ dropped her yellow
wings with the air of a salute, and lighted at the foot of the
water-steps under the terrace. The girl on the parapet leaned forward
eagerly.

'Did you get any mail, Giuseppe?' she called.

'_Si_, signorina.' He scrambled up the steps and presented a copy of the
London _Times_.

She received it with a shrug. Clearly, she felt little interest in the
London _Times_. Giuseppe took himself back to his boat and commenced
fussing about its fittings, dusting the seats, plumping up the cushions,
with an air of absorption which deceived nobody. The signorina watched
him a moment with amused comprehension, then she called peremptorily--

'Giuseppe, you know you must spade the garden border.'

Poor Giuseppe, in spite of his nautical costume, was man of all work. He
glanced dismally toward the garden border which lay basking in the
sunshine under the wall that divided Villa Rosa from the rest of the
world. It contained every known flower which blossoms in July in the
kingdom of Italy, from camellias and hydrangeas to heliotrope and
wall-flowers. Its spading was a complicated business and it lay too far
off to permit of conversation. Giuseppe was not only a lazy, but also a
social soul.

'Signorina,' he suggested, 'would you not like a sail?'

She shook her head. 'There is not wind enough and it is too hot and too
sunny.'

'But yes, there's a wind, and cool--when you get out on the lake. I will
put up the awning, signorina, the sun shall not touch you.'

She continued to shake her head and her eyes wandered suggestively to the
hydrangeas, but Giuseppe still made a feint of preoccupation. Not being a
cruel mistress, she dropped the subject, and turned back to her
conversation with the washer-girls. They were discussing--a pleasant
topic for a sultry summer afternoon--the probable content of Paradise.
The three girls were of the opinion that it was made up of warm sunshine
and cool shade, of flowers and singing birds and sparkling waters, of
blue skies and cloud-capped mountains--not unlike, it will be observed,
the very scene which at the moment stretched before them. In so much they
were all agreed, but there were several debatable points. Whether the
stones were made of gold, and whether the houses were not gold too, and,
that being the case, whether it would not hurt your eyes to look at the