"For marrying your best friend."

The little speech was well spoken, so utterly without complaint, or
rancour, or suggestion of earnestness, that the Contessa could only
smile.

"And yet you admit that I am not a bad husband," continued Folco.
"Should you accept me, or, say, my exact counterpart, for Aurora, in a
year or two?"

"I doubt whether you have any exact counterpart," Maddalena answered,
checking the sharp denial that rose to her lips.

"Myself, then, just for the sake of argument?"

"What an absurd question! Do you mind tightening the girth for me a
little? My saddle is slipping."

She drew rein, and he was obliged to submit to the check. As he
dismounted he glanced at Aurora's graceful figure, a hundred yards
ahead, and for one instant he drew his eyelids together with a very
strange expression. He knew that the Contessa could not see his face.

Marcello and Aurora had been companions since they were children, and
just now they were talking familiarly of the place, which they had not
seen since the previous year. All sorts of details struck them. Here,
there was more sand than usual; there, a large piece of timber had been
washed ashore in the winter gales; at another place there was a new
sand-drift that had quite buried the scrub on the top of the bank; the
keeper of the San Lorenzo tower had painted his shutters brown, though