She was, I thought, the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen, and to one who had read the famous work of Messer Firenzuola on feminine beauty it might seem, at first, that here stood the incarnation of that writer’s catalogue of womanly perfections.  She was of a good shape and stature, despite her tender years; her face was oval, delicately featured and of an ivory pallor.  Her eyes—­blue as the heavens overhead—­were not of the colour most approved by Firenzuola, nor was her hair of the golden brown which that arbiter commends.  Had Firenzuola seen her, it may well be that he had altered or modified his views.  She was sumptuously arrayed in a loose-sleeved camorra of grey velvet that was heavy with costly furs; above the lenza of fine linen on her head gleamed the gold thread of a jewelled net, and at her waist a girdle of surpassing richness, all set with gems, glowed like a thing of fire in the bright sunshine.

She took a deep breath of the sharp, invigorating air, then looked about her, and espying me in conversation with Giacopo she approached us across the gleaming snow.

“Is this,” she inquired, and her sweet, melodious voice was a perfect match to the graceful charm of her whole presence, “the traveller who so kindly consented to fill for us the office of a guide?”

Giacopo answered briefly that I was that man.

“I am in your debt, sir,” she protested, with an odd earnestness.  “You do not know how great a service you have rendered me.  But if at any time Paola Sforza di Santafior may be able to discharge this obligation, you shall find me very willing.”

White-faced, black-browed Giacopo scowled at this proclamation of her identity.

I made her a low bow, and answered coldly, brusquely almost, for I hated the very name of Sforza, and every living thing that bore it.

“Madonna, you overrate my service.  It so chanced that I was travelling this way.”

She looked more closely at me, as if she would have sought the reason of my churlish tone, and I was strangely thankful that she could not see the motley worn by the muffled stranger who confronted her.  No doubt she accounted me a clown, whose nature inclined to surliness, and so she turned away, telling Giacopo that as soon as the horses were breathed they might push on.

“We must rest them yet awhile, Madonna,” answered he, “if they are to carry us as far as Cagli.  Heaven send that we may obtain fresh cattle there, else is all lost.”

Her frown proclaimed how much his words displeased her.

“You forget that if there are no horses for us, neither are there any for those others.”  And she waved her hand towards the valley below and the road by which we had come.  From this and from what was said I gathered that they were a party of fugitives with pursuers at their heels.

“They have a warrant which we have not,” was Giacopo’s answer, gloomily delivered, “and they will seize cattle where they can find it.”