ever provoking to such a mind as mine. For all that it might profit me
naught to learn who rode there, and why with all this haste, yet these
were matters, I confess, on which my curiosity was aroused.

"Are you journeying beyond Cagli?" I asked him presently, in an idle tone.

He cocked his head, and eyed me aslant, the suspicion in his eyes
confirming the existence of the mystery I scented.

"Yes," he answered, after a pause. "We hope to reach Urbino before night.
And you? Are you journeying far?"

"That far, at least," I answered him, emulating the caution he had shown.

And then, ere more might pass between us, the leather curtains of the
litter were sharply drawn aside. At the sound I turned my head, and so
far was the vision different from that which--for no reason that I can
give--I had expected, that I was stricken with surprise and wonder. A
lady--a very child, indeed--had leapt nimbly to the ground ere any of
those grooms could offer her assistance.

She was, I thought, the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen, and to
one who had read the famous work of Messer Firenzuola on feminine beauty
it might seem, at first, that here stood the incarnation of that writer's
catalogue of womanly perfections. She was of a good shape and stature,
despite her tender years; her face was oval, delicately featured and of an
ivory pallor. Her eyes--blue as the heavens overhead--were not of the
colour most approved by Firenzuola, nor was her hair of the golden brown
which that arbiter commends. Had Firenzuola seen her, it may well be that
he had altered or modified his views. She was sumptuously arrayed in a