white road inlaid like a strip of
ivory on dark rocks above the sapphire of the Mediterranean, it was
fierce summer in the sunshine. A girl riding between two men, reined in
her chestnut mare at a cross-road which led into the jade-green twilight
of an olive grove. The men pulled up their horses also, and all three
came to a sudden halt at a bridge flung across a swift but shallow river,
whose stony bed cleft the valley.

The afternoon sunshine poured down upon them, burnishing the coils of the
girl's hair to gold, and giving a dazzling brilliancy to a complexion
which for twenty years to come need not fear the light of day. She was
gazing up the valley shut in on either side with thickly wooded hills,
their rugged heads still gilded, their shoulders already half in shadow;
but the eyes of the men rested only upon her. One was English, the other
Italian; and it was the Italian whose look devoured her beauty, moving
hungrily from the shining tendrils of gold that curled at the back of her
white neck, up to the small pink ear almost hidden with a thick, rippling
wave of hair; so to the piquant profile which to those who loved Virginia
Beverly, was dearer than cold perfection.

"Oh, the olive woods!" she exclaimed. "How sweet they are! See the way
the sunshine touches the old, gnarled trunks, and what a lovely light
filters through the leaves. One never sees it anywhere except in an olive
grove. I should like to live in one."

"Well, why not?" laughed the Englishman. "What prevents you from buying
two or three? But you would soon tire of them, my child, as you do of
everything as soon as it belongs to you."

"That's not fair," replied the girl. "Besides, if it were, who has helped
to spoil me? I _will_ buy an olive grove, and you shall see if I tire of
it. Come, let's ride up the valley, and find out if there are any for
sale. It looks heavenly cool after this heat."

"You'll soon discover that it's too cool," said the Italian, in perfect
English. "The sun is only in these valleys for a few hours, and it's gone
for the day now. Besides, there's nothing interesting here. One sees the
best from where we stand."

Virginia Beverly turned her eyes upon him, and let them dwell on his face
questioningly. "Of course, you must know every inch of this country," she
said, "as you used to live just across the Italian border."

For once he did not answer her look. "I haven't spent much time here for
several years. Paris has abs