“She is not very old—­only twenty-six, twenty-seven,” said Marietta.

“Don’t try to persuade me that she is n’t old enough to know better,” retorted Peter, sternly.

“But she has her guards, her keepers, to look after her property,” said Marietta.

“Guards and keepers are mere mercenaries.  If you want a thing well done, you should do it yourself,” said Peter, with gloomy sententiousness.

On Sunday he went to the little grey rococo parish church.  There were two Masses, one at eight o’clock, one at ten—­and the church was quite a mile from Villa Floriano, and up a hill; and the Italian sun was hot—­but the devoted young man went to both.

The Duchessa was at neither.

“What does she think will become of her immortal soul?” he asked Marietta.

On Monday he went to the pink-stuccoed village post-office.

Before the post-office door a smart little victoria, with a pair of sprightly, fine-limbed French bays, was drawn up, ducal coronets emblazoned on its panels.

Peter’s heart began to beat.

And while he was hesitating on the doorstep, the door opened, and the Duchessa came forth—­tall, sumptuous, in white, with a wonderful black-plumed hat, and a wonderful white-frilled sunshade.  She was followed by a young girl—­a pretty, dark-complexioned girl, of fourteen, fifteen perhaps, with pleasant brown eyes (that lucent Italian brown), and in her cheeks a pleasant hint of red (that covert Italian red, which seems to glow through the thinnest film of satin).

Peter bowed, standing aside to let them pass.

But when he looked up, the Duchessa had stopped, and was smiling on him.

His heart beat harder.

“A lovely day,” said the Duchessa.

“Delightful,” agreed Peter, between two heart-beats.—­Yet he looked, in his grey flannels, with his straw-hat and his eyeglass, with his lean face, his even colour, his slightly supercilious moustaches—­he looked a very embodiment of cool-blooded English equanimity.

“A trifle warm, perhaps?” the Duchessa suggested, with her air of polite (or was it in some part humorous?) readiness to defer to his opinion.

“But surely,” suggested he, “in Italy, in summer, it is its bounden duty to be a trifle warm?”

The Duchessa smiled.

“You like it?  So do I. But what the country really needs is rain.”

“Then let us hope,” said he, “that the country’s real needs may remain unsatisfied.”

The Duchessa tittered.

“Think of the poor farmers,” she said reproachfully.

“It’s vain to think of them,” he answered. “’T is an ascertained fact that no condition of the weather ever contents the farmers.”

The Duchessa laughed.

“Ah, well,” she consented, “then I ’ll join in your hope that the fine weather may last.  I—­I trust,” she was so good as to add, “that you’re not entirely uncomfortable at Villa Floriano?”