In the lady's face there flickered, perhaps, for half a second, the faintest light, as of a comprehending and unresentful smile. But she went on, with fine detachment

"How calm and still it is. The wonderful peace of the day's compline. It seems as if the earth had stopped breathing--does n't it? The birds have already gone to bed, though the sun is only just setting. It is the hour when they are generally noisiest; but they have gone to bed--the sparrows and the finches, the s.n.a.t.c.hers and the s.n.a.t.c.hed-from, are equal in the article of sleep. That is because they feel the touch of autumn.

How beautiful it is, in spite of its sadness, this first touch of autumn--it is like sad distant music. Can you a.n.a.lyse it, can you explain it? There is no chill, it is quite warm, and yet one knows somehow that autumn is here. The birds know it, and have gone to bed.

In another month they will be flying away, to Africa and the Hesperides--all of them except the sparrows, who stay all winter. I wonder how they get on during the winter, with no goldfinches to s.n.a.t.c.h from?"

She turned to Peter with a look of respectful enquiry, as one appealing to an authority for information.

"Oh, they s.n.a.t.c.h from each other, during the winter," he explained. "It is thief rob thief, when honest victims are not forthcoming. And--what is more to the point--they must keep their beaks in, against the return of the goldfinches with the spring."

The d.u.c.h.essa--for I scorn to deceive the trustful reader longer; and (as certain fines mouches, despite my efforts at concealment, may ere this have suspected) the mysterious lady was no one else--the d.u.c.h.essa gaily laughed.

"Yes," she said, "the goldfinches will return with the spring. But isn't that rather foolish of them? If I were a goldfinch, I think I should make my abode permanent in the sparrowless south."

"There is no sparrowless south," said Peter. "Sparrows, alas, abound in every lat.i.tude; and the farther south you go, the fiercer and bolder and more impudent they become. In Africa and the Hesperides, which you have mentioned, they not infrequently attack the caravans, peck the eyes out of the camels, and are sometimes even known to carry off a man, a whole man, vainly struggling in their inexorable talons. There is no sparrowless south. But as for the goldfinches returning--it is the instinct of us bipeds to return. Plumed and plumeless, we all return to something, what though we may have registered the most solemn vows to remain away."

He delivered his last phrases with an accent, he punctuated them with a glance, in which there may have lurked an intention.

But the d.u.c.h.essa did not appear to notice it.

"Yes--true--so we do," she a.s.sented vaguely. "And what you tell me of the sparrows in the Hesperides is very novel and impressive--unless, indeed, it is a mere traveller's tale, with which you are seeking to practise upon my credulity. But since I find you in this communicative vein, will you not push complaisance a half-inch further, and tell me what that thing is, suspended there in the sky above the crest of the Corn.o.bastone--that pale round thing, that looks like the spectre of a magnified half-crown?"

Peter turned to the quarter her gaze indicated.

"Oh, that," he said, "is nothing. In frankness, it is only what the vulgar style the moon."

"How odd," said she. "I thought it was what the vulgar style the moon."

And they both laughed again.

The d.u.c.h.essa moved a little; and thus she uncovered, carved on the back of her marble bench, and blazoned in red and gold, a coat of arms.

She touched the shield with her finger.

"Are you interested in canting heraldry?" she asked. "There is no country so rich in it as Italy. These are the arms of the Farfalla, the original owners of this property. Or, seme of twenty roses gules; the crest, on a rose gules, a b.u.t.terfly or, with wings displayed; and the motto--how could the heralds ever have sanctioned such an unheraldic and unheroic motto?

Rosa amorosa, Farfalla giojosa, Mi cantano al cuore La gioja e l' amore.

They were the great people of this region for countless generations, the Farfalla. They were Princes of Ventirose and Patricians of Milan. And then the last of them was ruined at Monte Carlo, and killed himself there, twenty-odd years ago. That is how all their gioja and amore ended. It was the case of a b.u.t.terfly literally broken upon a wheel. The estate fell into the hands of the Jews, as everything more or less does sooner or later; and they--if you can believe me--they were going to turn the castle into an hotel, into one of those monstrous modern hotels, for other Jews to come to, when I happened to hear of it, and bought it. Fancy turning that splendid old castle into a Jew-infested hotel! It is one of the few castles in Italy that have a ghost. Oh, but a quite authentic ghost. It is called the White Page--il Paggio Bianco di Ventirose. It is the ghost of a boy about sixteen. He walks on the ramparts of the old keep, and looks off towards the lake, as if he were watching a boat, and sometimes he waves his arms, as if he were signalling. And from head to foot he is perfectly white, like a statue.

I have never seen him myself; but so many people say they have, I cannot doubt he is authentic. And the Jews wanted to turn this haunted castle into an hotel... As a tribute to the memory of the Farfalla, I take pains to see that their arms, which are carved, as you see them here, in at least a hundred different places, are remetalled and retinctured as often as time and the weather render it necessary."

She looked towards the castle, while she spoke; and now she rose, with the design, perhaps, of moving in that direction.

Peter felt that the moment had come for actualities.

"It seems improbable," he began,--"and I 'm afraid you will think there is a tiresome monotony in my purposes; but I am here again to return Cardinal Udeschini's snuff box. He left it in my garden."

"Oh--?" said the d.u.c.h.essa. "Yes, he thought he must have left it there.

He is always mislaying it. Happily, he has another, for emergencies. It was very good of you to trouble to bring it back."

She gave a light little laugh..

"I may also improve this occasion," Peter abruptly continued, "to make my adieux. I shall be leaving for England in a few days now."

The d.u.c.h.essa raised her eyebrows.

"Really?" she said. "Oh, that is too bad," she added, by way of comment.

"October, you know, is regarded as the best month of all the twelve, in this lake country."

"Yes, I know it," Peter responded regretfully.

"And it is a horrid month in England," she went on.

"It is an abominable month in England," he acknowledged.

"Here it is blue, like larkspur, and all fragrant of the vintage, and joyous with the songs of the vintagers," she said. "There it is dingy-brown, and songless, and it smells of smoke."

"Yes," he agreed.

"But you are a sportsman? You go in for shooting?" she conjectured.

"No," he answered. "I gave up shooting years ago."

"Oh--? Hunting, then?"

"I hate hunting. One is always getting rolled on by one's horse."

"Ah, I see. It--it will be golf, perhaps?"

"No, it is not even golf."

"Don't tell me it is football?"

"Do I look as if it were football?"

"It is sheer homesickness, in fine? You are grieving for the purple of your native heather?"

"There is scarcely any heather in my native county. No," said Peter, "no. To tell you the truth, it is the usual thing. It is an histoire de femme."

"I 'might have guessed it," she exclaimed. "It is still that everlasting woman."

"That everlasting woman--?" Peter faltered.

"To be sure," said she. "The woman you are always going on about. The woman of your novel. This woman, in short."

And she produced from behind her back a hand that she had kept there, and held up for his inspection a grey-and-gold bound book.

"MY novel--?" faltered he. (But the sight of it, in her possession, in these particular circ.u.mstances, gave him a thrill that was not a thrill of despair.)