looking up sullenly from their work as their suzerain
and protector thrust an unfamiliar painted smile between the curtains of
his litter.

What his grandfather thought of Valdu (to which the Count on the way
home referred with smirking apologies as the mountain-lair of his
barbarous ancestors) was patent enough even to Odo's undeveloped
perceptions; but it would have required a more experienced understanding
to detect the motive that led the Marquess, scarce two days after their
visit, to accord his daughter's hand to the Count. Odo felt a shock of
dismay on learning that his beautiful mother was to become the property
of an old gentleman whom he guessed to be of his grandfather's age, and
whose enamoured grimaces recalled the antics of her favourite monkey,
and the boy's face reflected the blush of embarrassment with which Donna
Laura imparted the news; but the children of that day were trained to a
passive acquiescence, and had she informed him that she was to be
chained in the keep on bread and water, Odo would have accepted the fact
with equal philosophy. Three weeks afterward his mother and the old
Count were married in the chapel of Donnaz, and Donna Laura, with many
tears and embraces, set out for Turin, taking her monkey but leaving her
son behind. It was not till later that Odo learned of the social usage
which compelled young widows to choose between remarriage and the
cloister; and his subsequent views were unconsciously tinged by the
remembrance of his mother's melancholy bridal.

Her departure left no traces but were speedily repaired by the coming of
spring. The sun growing warmer, and the close season putting an end to
the Marquess's hunting, it was now Odo's chief pleasure to carry his
books to the walled garden between the castle and the southern face of
the cliff. This small enclosure, probably a survival of medieval
horticulture, had along the upper ledge of its wall a grass walk
commanding the flow of the stream, and an angle turret that turned one
slit to the valley, the other to the garden lying below like a tranquil
well of scent and brightness: its box trees clipped to the shape of
peacocks and lions, its clove pinks and simples set in a border of
thrift, and a pear tree basking on its sunny wall. These pleasant
spaces, which Odo had to himself save when the canonesses walked there
to recite their rosary, he peopled with the knights and ladies of the
novelle, and the fantastic beings of Pulci's