'What is it you want to ask?'

'Are you going to marry that Italian lieutenant--or perhaps the captain?'

'That _is_ impertinent.'

'Are you?'

'You forget yourself, Tony. It is not your place to ask such a question.'

'_Si_, signorina; it is my place. If it is true I cannot be your donkey-man any longer.'

'No, it is not true, but that is no concern of yours.'

'Are you going on another trip Friday--to Monte Maggiore?'

'Yes.'

'May I come with you?'

His tone implied more than his words. She hesitated a moment, then shrugged indifferently.

'Just as you please, Tony. If you don't wish to work for us any more I dare say we can find another man.'

'It is as you please, signorina. If you wish it, I come, if you do not wish it, I go.'

She made no answer. They joined the others and the party proceeded to the villa gates.

Lieutenant di Ferara helped Constance dismount, while Captain Coroloni, with none too good a grace, held the donkey. A careful observer would have fancied that the lieutenant was ahead, and that both he and the captain knew it. Tony untied the bundles, dumped them on the kitchen floor, and waited respectfully, hat in hand, while Mr. Wilder searched his pockets for change. He counted out four lire and added a note. Tony pocketed the lire and returned the note, while Mr. Wilder stared his astonishment.

'Good-bye, Tony,' Constance smiled as he turned away.

'Good-bye, signorina.' There was a note of finality in his voice.

'Well!' Mr. Wilder e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. 'That is the first----' 'Italian' he started to say, but he caught the word before it was out--'donkey-driver I ever saw refuse money.'

Lieutenant di Ferara raised his shoulders.

'_Mache_! The fellow is too honest; you do well to watch him.' There was a world of disgust in his tone.

Constance glanced after the retreating figure and laughed.

'Tony!' she called.

He kept on; she raised her voice.

'Mr. Yamhankeesh.'

He paused.

'You call, signorina?'

'Be sure and be here by half-past six on Friday morning; we must start early.'

'Sank you, signorina. Good night.'

'Good night, Tony.'

CHAPTER VIII

The Hotel du Lac may be approached in two ways. The ordinary, obvious way, which incoming tourists of necessity choose, is by the high road and the gate. But the romantic way is by water. One sees only the garden then, and the garden is the distinguished feature of the place; it was planned long before the hotel was built to adorn a marquis's pleasure house. There are grottos, arbours, fountains, a winding stream, and, stretching the length of the water front, a deep cool grove of interlaced plane trees. At the end of the grove, half a dozen broad stone steps dip down to a tiny harbour which is carpeted on the surface with lily pads.

The steps are worn by the lapping waves of fifty years, and are grown over with slippery, slimy water weeds.

The world was just stirring from its afternoon siesta, when the _Farfalla_ dropped her yellow sails and floated into the shady little harbour. Giuseppe prodded and pushed along the fern-grown banks until the keel jolted against the water-steps. He sprang ash.o.r.e and steadied the boat while Constance alighted. She slipped on the mossy step--almost went under--and righted herself with a laugh that rang gaily through the grove.

She came up the steps still smiling, shook out her fluffy pink skirts, straightened her rose-trimmed hat, and glanced reconnoitringly about the grove. One might reasonably expect, attacking the hotel as it were from the flank, to capture unawares any stray guest. But aside from a chaffinch or so and a brown and white spotted calf tied to a tree, the grove was empty--blatantly empty. There was a shade of disappointment in Constance's glance. One naturally does not like to waste one's best embroidered gown on a spotted calf.

Then her eye suddenly brightened as it lighted on a vivid splash of yellow under a tree. She crossed over and picked it up--a paper-covered French novel; the t.i.tle was _Bijou_, the author was Gyp. She turned to the first page. Any reasonably careful person might be expected to write his name in the front of a book--particularly a French book--before abandoning it to the mercies of a foreign hotel. But the several fly-leaves were immaculately innocent of all sign of ownership.

So intent was she upon this examination, that she did not hear footsteps approaching down the long arbour that led from the house; so intent was the young man upon a frowning scrutiny of the path before him, that he did not see Constance until he had pa.s.sed from the arbour into the grove.

Then simultaneously they raised their heads and looked at each other. For a startled second they stared--rather guiltily--both with the air of having been caught. Constance recovered her poise first; she nodded--a nod which contained not the slightest hint of recognition--and laughed.

'Oh!' she said. 'I suppose this is your book? And I am afraid you have caught me red-handed. You must excuse me for looking at it, but usually at this season only German Alpine climbers stop at the Hotel du Lac, and I was surprised, you know, to find that German Alpine climbers did anything so frivolous as reading Gyp.'

The man bowed with a gesture which made her free of the book, but he continued his silence. Constance glanced at him again, and this time she allowed a flash of recognition to appear in her face.

'Oh!' she re-exclaimed with a note of interested politeness, 'you are the young man who stumbled into Villa Rosa last Monday looking for the garden of the prince?'

He bowed a second time, an answering flash appearing in his face.

'And you are the young woman who was sitting on the wall beside a row of--of----'

'Stockings?' She nodded. 'I trust you found the prince's garden without difficulty?'

'Yes, thank you. Your directions were very explicit.'

A slight pause followed, the young man waiting deferentially for her to take the lead.

'You find Valedolmo interesting?' she inquired.

'Interesting!' His tone was enthusiastic. 'Aside from the prince's garden, which contains a cedar of Lebanon and an india-rubber plant from South America, there is the Luini in the chapel of San Bartolomeo, and the statue of Garibaldi in the piazza. And then----' he waved his hand toward the lake, 'there is always the view.'

'Yes,' she agreed, 'one can always look at the view.'

Her eyes wandered to the lake, and across the lake to Monte Maggiore with clouds drifting about its peak. And while she obligingly studied the mountain, he studied the effect of the pink gown and the rose-bud hat.