the quail migrate along the coast and the malarious fever is not yet to
be feared. It was there that Marcello had first learned to handle a gun,
spending a week at a time there with his stepfather; and his mother used
to come down now and then for a day or two on a visit, sometimes
bringing her friend the Contessa dell' Armi. The latter had been very
unhappy in her youth, and had been left a widow with one beautiful girl
and a rather exiguous fortune. Some people thought that it was odd that
the Signora Corbario, who was a saint if ever there was one, should have
grown so fond of the Contessa, for the latter had seen stormy days in
years gone by; and of course the ill-disposed gossips made up their
minds that the Contessa was trying to catch Marcello for her daughter
Aurora, though the child was barely seventeen.

This was mere gossip, for she was quite incapable of any such scheme.
What the gossips did not know was something which would have interested
them much more, namely, that the Contessa was the only person in Rome
who distrusted Folco Corbario, and that she was in constant fear lest
she should turn out to be right, and lest her friend's paradise should
be suddenly changed into a purgatory. But she held her tongue, and her
quiet face never betrayed her thoughts. She only watched, and noted from
month to month certain small signs which seemed to prove her right; and
she should be ready, whenever the time should come, by day or night, to
help her friend, or comfort her, or fight for her.

If Corbario guessed that the Contessa did not trust him, he never showed
it. He had found her installed as his wife's friend, and had accepted
her, treating her with much courtesy and a sort of vicarious affection;
but though he tried his best he could not succeed in reaching anything
like intimacy with her, and while she seemed to conceal nothing, he felt
that she was hiding her real self from him. Whether she did so out of