“That Shakespeare has come back to life!” marvelled the Duchessa.  “Do you mean to say that most literary men fancy that?”

“I think perhaps I am acquainted with three who don’t,” Peter replied; “but one of them merely wears his rue with a difference.  He fancies that it’s Goethe.”

“How extravagantly—­how exquisitely droll!” she laughed.

“I confess, it struck me so, until I got accustomed to it,” said he, “until I learned that it was one of the commonplaces, one of the normal attributes of the literary temperament.  It’s as much to be taken for granted, when you meet an author, as the tail is to be taken for granted, when you meet a cat.”

“I’m vastly your debtor for the information—­it will stand me in stead with the next author who comes my way.  But, in that case, your friend Mr. Felix Wildmay will be, as it were, a sort of Manx cat?” was her smiling deduction.

“Yes, if you like, in that particular, a sort of Manx cat,” acquiesced Peter, with a laugh.

The Duchessa laughed too; and then there was a little pause.

Overhead, never so light a breeze lisped never so faintly in the tree-tops; here and there bird-notes fell, liquid, desultory, like drops of rain after a shower; and constantly one heard the cool music of the river.  The sun, filtering through worlds and worlds of leaves, shed upon everything a green-gold penumbra.  The air, warm and still, was sweet with garden-scents.  The lake, according to its habit at this hour of the afternoon, had drawn a grey veil over its face, a thin grey veil, through which its sapphire-blue shone furtively.  Far away, in the summer haze, Monte Sfiorito seemed a mere dim spectre of itself—­a stranger might easily have mistaken it for a vague mass of cloud floating above the horizon.

“Are you aware that it ’s a singularly lovely afternoon?” the Duchessa asked, by and by.

“I have a hundred reasons for thinking it so,” Peter hazarded, with the least perceptible approach to a meaning bow.

In the Duchessa’s face, perhaps, there flickered, for half-a-second, the least perceptible light, as of a comprehending and unresentful smile.  But she went on, with fine aloofness.

“I rather envy you your river, you know.  We are too far from it at the castle.  Is n’t the sound, the murmur, of it delicious?  And its colour—­how does it come by such a subtle colour?  Is it green?  Is it blue?  And the diamonds on its surface—­see how they glitter.  You know, of course,” she questioned, “who the owner is of those unequalled gems?”

“Surely,” Peter answered, “the lady paramount of this demesne?”

“No, no.”  She shook her head, smiling.  “Undine.  They are Undine’s—­her necklaces and tiaras.  No mortal woman’s jewel-case contains anything half so brilliant.  But look at them—­look at the long chains of them—­how they float for a minute—­and are then drawn down.  They are Undine’s—­Undine and her companions are sporting with them just below the surface.  A moment ago I caught a glimpse of a white arm.”