“If I do!” His tone was full of youthful and righteous indignation.

“I did not mean to doubt it,” she said quickly.  “But it is getting to be different now, you know.  We are older, and somehow everything means more, even the little things.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Marcello.  “I begin to see.  I suppose,” he added, with what seemed to him reckless brutality, “that if I kissed you now you would be furious.”

He glanced uneasily at Aurora’s face to note the effect of this terrible speech.  The result was not exactly what he had expected.  A faint colour rose in her cheeks, and then she laughed.

“When you do,” she said, “I would rather it should not be before people.”

“I shall try to remember that,” answered Marcello, considerably emboldened.

“Yes, do!  It would be so humiliating if I boxed your ears in the presence of witnesses.”

“You would not dare,” laughed Marcello.

From a distance, as Aurora had guessed, Folco was watching them while he quietly talked to the Contessa; and as he watched, he understood what a change had taken place since last year, when he had seen Marcello and Aurora riding over the same stretch of sand on the same little horses.  He ventured a reflection, to see what his companion would answer.

“I daresay many people would say that those two young people were made for each other.”

Maddalena looked at him inquiringly and then glanced at her daughter.

“And what do you say?” she asked, with some curiosity.

“I say ‘no.’  And you?”

“I agree with you.  Aurora is like me—­like what I was.  Marcello would bore her to death in six months, and Aurora would drive him quite mad.”

Corbario smiled.

“I had hoped,” he said, “that women with marriageable daughters would think Marcello a model husband.  But of course I am prejudiced.  I have had a good deal to do with his bringing up during the last four years.”

“No one can say that you have not done your duty by him,” Maddalena answered.  “I wish I could feel that I had done as well by Aurora—­indeed I do!”

“You have, but you had quite a different nature to deal with.”

“I should think so!  It is my own.”

Corbario heard the little sigh as she turned her head away, and being a wise man he said nothing in answer.  He was not a Roman, if indeed he were really an Italian at all, but he had vaguely heard the Contessa’s story.  She had been married very young to a parliamentary high-light, who had made much noise in his day, had spent more than half of her fortune after getting rid of his own, and had been forgotten on the morrow of his premature death.  It was said that she had loved another man with all her heart, but Corbario had never known who it was.

The sun was almost setting when they turned homeward, and it was dark when they reached the cottage.  They found an unexpected arrival installed beside the Signora in the doorway of the sitting-room.