which he had hung upon a ribbon, and carried it to his lips.  Blushing, Miss Lydia stepped back from the window, then returning to it almost at once, she saw the two Corsicans cantering their little ponies rapidly toward the mountains.  Half an hour later the colonel showed them to her, through his glasses, riding along the end of the bay, and she noticed that Orso constantly turned his head toward the town.  At last he disappeared behind the marshes, the site of which is now filled by a flourishing nursery garden.

Miss Lydia glanced at herself in the glass, and thought she looked pale.

“What must that young man think of me,” said she, “and what did I think of him?  And why did I think about him? . . .  A travelling acquaintance! . . .  What have I come to Corsica for? . . .  Oh!  I don’t care for him! . . .  No! no! and besides the thing is impossible . . .  And Colomba . . .  Fancy me sister-in-law to a voceratrice, who wears a big dagger!”

And she noticed she was still holding King Theodore’s dagger in her hand.  She tossed it on to her toilette table.  “Colomba, in London, dancing at Almacks! . . .  Good heavens! what a lion[*] that would be, to show off! . . .  Perhaps she’d make a great sensation! . . .  He loves me, I’m certain of it!  He is the hero of a novel, and I have interrupted his adventurous career. . . .  But did he really long to avenge his father in true Corsican fashion? . . .  He was something between a Conrad and a dandy . . .  I’ve turned him into nothing but a dandy! . . .  And a dandy with a Corsican tailor! . . .”

     [*] At this period this name was used in England for people
     who were the fashion because they had something
     extraordinary about them.

She threw herself on her bed, and tried to sleep—­but that proved an impossibility, and I will not undertake to continue her soliloquy, during which she declared, more than a hundred times over, that Signor della Rebbia had not been, was not, and never should be, anything to her.

CHAPTER IX

Meanwhile Orso was riding along beside his sister.  At first the speed at which their horses moved prevented all conversation, but when the hills grew so steep that they were obliged to go at a foot’s pace, they began to exchange a few words about the friends from whom they had just parted.  Colomba spoke with admiration of Miss Nevil’s beauty, of her golden hair, and charming ways.  Then she asked whether the colonel was really as rich as he appeared, and whether Miss Lydia was his only child.

“She would be a good match,” said she.  “Her father seems to have a great liking for you——­”