“I don’t think you have quite forgiven me as it is,” Folco answered more lightly.

“For what?”

“For marrying your best friend.”

The little speech was well spoken, so utterly without complaint, or rancour, or suggestion of earnestness, that the Contessa could only smile.

“And yet you admit that I am not a bad husband,” continued Folco.  “Should you accept me, or, say, my exact counterpart, for Aurora, in a year or two?”

“I doubt whether you have any exact counterpart,” Maddalena answered, checking the sharp denial that rose to her lips.

“Myself, then, just for the sake of argument?”

“What an absurd question!  Do you mind tightening the girth for me a little?  My saddle is slipping.”

She drew rein, and he was obliged to submit to the check.  As he dismounted he glanced at Aurora’s graceful figure, a hundred yards ahead, and for one instant he drew his eyelids together with a very strange expression.  He knew that the Contessa could not see his face.

Marcello and Aurora had been companions since they were children, and just now they were talking familiarly of the place, which they had not seen since the previous year.  All sorts of details struck them.  Here, there was more sand than usual; there, a large piece of timber had been washed ashore in the winter gales; at another place there was a new sand-drift that had quite buried the scrub on the top of the bank; the keeper of the San Lorenzo tower had painted his shutters brown, though they had always been green; here was the spot where Aurora had tumbled off her pony when she was only twelve years old—­so long ago!  And here—­they looked at each other and then quickly at the sea, for it was here that Marcello, in a fit of boyish admiration, had once suddenly kissed her cheek, telling her that she was perfectly beautiful.  Even now, he blushed when he thought of it, and yet he longed to do it again, and wondered inwardly what would happen if he did.

As for Aurora, though she looked at the sea for a moment, she seemed quite self-possessed.  It is a strange thing that if a boy and a girl are brought up in just the same way, by women, and without many companions, the boy should generally be by far the more shy of the two when childhood is just past.

“You are very fond of your stepfather, are you not?” asked Aurora, so suddenly that Marcello started a little and hesitated slightly before he answered.

“Yes,” he said, almost directly, “of course I am!  Don’t you like him, too?”

“I used to,” answered Aurora in a low voice, “but now his eyes frighten me—­sometimes.  For instance, though he is a good way behind, I am sure he is looking at me now, just in that way.”

Marcello turned his head instinctively, and saw that Folco had just dismounted to tighten the girth of the Contessa’s saddle.  It was exactly while Aurora was speaking that he had drawn his eyelids together with such a strange expression—­a mere coincidence, no doubt, but one that would have startled the girl if she could have suddenly seen his face.