Countess Clarice to attend her. The old high-roofed palace of the French
princess lay below him, in its gardens along the river: he could figure,
as he looked down on it, the throng of carriages and chairs, the
modishly dressed riders, the pedestrians crowding the footpath to watch
the quality go by. The vision of all that noise and glitter deepened the
sweetness of the woodland hush. He sighed again. Suddenly voices sounded
in the road below--a man's speech flecked with girlish laughter. Odo
hung back listening: the girl's voice rang like a bird-call through his
rustling fancies. Presently she came in sight: a slender black-mantled
figure hung on the arm of an elderly man in the sober dress of one of
the learned professions--a physician or a lawyer, Odo guessed. Their
being afoot, and the style of the man's dress, showed that they were of
the middle class; their demeanour, that they were father and daughter.
The girl moved with a light forward flowing of her whole body that
seemed the pledge of grace in every limb: of her face Odo had but a
bright glimpse in the eclipse of her flapping hat-brim. She stood under
his tree unheeded; but as they rose abreast of him the girl paused and
dropped her companion's arm.

"Look! The cherry flowers!" she cried, and stretched her arms to a white
gush of blossoms above the wall across the road. The movement tilted
back her hat, and Odo caught her small fine profile, wide-browed as the
head on some Sicilian coin, with a little harp-shaped ear bedded in dark
ripples.

"Oh," she wailed, straining on tiptoe, "I can't reach them!"

Her father smiled. "May temptation," said he philosophically, "always
hang as far out of your reach."