wind comes screaming from the snowy Abruzzi, and when Vesuvius is clad
in white almost to the lower villages. In Naples it is sometimes dreary
when the water-laden southwest sends up its mountains of black clouds.
But somehow in soft Posilippo the wind is tempered and the rain seems
but a shower, and spring and summer, summer and spring, ever join hands
amongst the ilexes and the laurels and the orange trees.

On this day it was all summer, for there was not a cloud in the air nor
a whitecap on the sea as the water gently lapped against the steps at
the foot of Bianca Corleone's garden. It was so warm that she was
sitting there herself, a book unread on her knees, her marvellous face
towards the day, her small feet resting on the lower rail of another
chair before her, just because the gravel might possibly be damp.

Beside her, and turned towards her, looking earnestly to her averted
eyes, sat Pietro Ghisleri, the man who many years afterwards married
Lady Herbert Arden, of whom many have heard,--a man young at that time
and not world-worn as he was later, nor prematurely gaunt and
weather-beaten. He was only five-and-twenty years of age, then, and the
beautiful Bianca was but twenty-one, and had already been married two
years to Corleone. But the suffering of a lifetime had been crushed into
those two years; for Corleone was bad, from his head to his heart, all
through, and she had believed that she loved him.

Then, half broken-hearted, she had listened to Ghisleri; and he loved
her truly, with all his heart. Even society found little to say at that,
and perhaps there was little enough to be said. To all intents and
purposes, Corleone had abandoned her, and Ghisleri was often with her.
It was not until later that her brother, Gianforte Campodonico, lifted
up his hand against Ghisleri for the first time.