English ladies who come in the summer to the Casa del Mare as they
call it, on the island close to the Grotto of Virgilio by San
Francesco's Pool. They were here this afternoon, but they're gone
back. Their boat is white with a green line, Signorino Marchesino."

"Grazie, Giuseppe," said the Marchesino, with an immovable
countenance. "Do you smoke cigarettes?'

"Signorino Marchesino, I do when I have any soldi to buy them with."

"Take these."

The Marchesino emptied one side of his cigarette case into the
boatman's hand, called a hired carriage, and drove off towards the
Villa--the horse going at a frantic trot, while the coachman, holding
a rein in each hand, ejaculated, "A--ah!" every ten seconds, in a
voice that was fiercely hortatory.

Artois, from his window, saw the carriage rattle past, and saw his
friend leaning back in it, with alert eyes, to scan every woman
passing by. He stood on the balcony for a moment till the noise of the
wheels on the stone pavement died away. When he returned to his
writing-table the mood for work was gone. He sat down in his chair. He
took up his pen. But he found himself thinking of two people, the
extraordinary difference between whom was the cause of his now linking
them together in his mind. He found himself thinking of the Marchesino
and of Vere.

Not for a moment did he doubt the identity of the two women in the
white boat. They were Hermione and Vere. The Marchesino had read him