Given a large fortune and ordinary liberty, it might be foreseen that
the boy would not reach the haven of maturity without meeting a storm,
even if the outward circumstances of chance were all in his favour, even
if no one had an interest in ruining him, even if Folco Corbario did not
want all for himself, as poor Ercole told his dog that he did in the
solitude of his hut.

Marcello had a bad chance at the start, and Maddalena dell' Armi, who
knew the world well in all its moods, and had suffered by it and sinned
for it, and had shed many tears in secret before becoming what she was
now, foresaw danger, and hoped that her daughter's fate might not be
bound up with that of her friend's son, much as she herself liked the
gentle-hearted boy. She wondered how long any one would call him gentle
after he got his first taste of pleasure and pain.




CHAPTER IV



It was very early morning, and there was no shooting, for a
southwesterly gale had been blowing all night, and the birds passed far
inland. All along the beach, for twenty-five miles in an unbroken line,
the surf thundered in, with a double roar, breaking on the bar, then
gathering strength again, rising grey and curling green and crashing
down upon the sand. Then the water opened out in vast sheets of crawling
foam that ran up to the very foot of the bank where the scrub began to