The old man looked after the little vessel as it went over the waves, dipping and righting itself with pretty ease.
'Her lover cannot be that missing youth of Mantua,' he thought, 'or never would she have taken it so quietly. A great reward, and a damo with a title to his name! Nay, nay, such good luck would have turned her head. She used to be in heaven when one but gave her a silly flower or a shell.'
The boat went over the sea homeward.
It was now high noon.
The sea sparkled, blue as woodland pimpernels, and ran merrily from under her bows.
She was hardly conscious of anything she did: she steered straight by sheer force of habit, not seeing either the sky or the water, either the pale white coast or the dusky belt of the pines that divided the beach from the hills.
When the boat was beneath the Sasso Scritto, she ran it ashore, left it lying on the sand, with the wine and the flour in it forgotten, and took her course over the
