for what she said threw new
light on all he had thought out for himself of late.

"And you say that Folco is thinking of marrying again," he said, almost
ashamed to profit by information obtained as Regina had got it.

"Yes, he is in love with a young girl, and wishes to marry her."

Marcello said nothing.

"Should you like to know her name?" asked Regina.

Still Marcello was silent, as if refusing to answer, and yet wishing
that she should go on.

"I will tell you," Regina said. "Her name is Aurora dell' Armi."

Marcello started, and looked into her face, doubting her word for the
first time. He changed colour, too, flushing and then turning pale.

"It is not true!" he cried, rather hoarsely. "It cannot be true!"

"It is true," Regina answered, "but she will not have him. She would not
marry him, even if her mother would allow it."

"Thank God!" exclaimed Marcello fervently.

Regina sighed, and turned away.

CHAPTER XV

Ercole sat on the stone seat that ran along the wall of the inn, facing
the dusty road. He was waiting in the cool dawn until it should please
the innkeeper to open the door, and Nino crouched beside him, his head
resting on his forepaws.

A great many years had passed since Ercole had sat there the last time,
but nothing had changed, so far as he could see. He had been young, and
the women had called him handsome; his face had not been shrivelled to
parchment by the fever, and there had been no grey threads in his thick
black hair. Nino had not been born then, and now Nino seemed to be a
part of himself. Nino's grandam had lain in almost the same spot then,
wolfish and hungry as her descendant was now, and only a trifle less
uncannily hideous. It was all very much the same, but between that time
and this there lay all Ercole's life by the Roman shore.

When he had heard, as every one had, how Marcello had been brought to
Rome on the tail of a wine-cart, he had been sure that the boy had been
laid upon it while the cart was standing before Paoluccio's inn in the
night. He knew the road well, and the ways of the carters, and that they
rarely stopped anywhere else between Frascati and Rome. Again and again
he had been on the point of tramping up from the seashore to the place,
to see whether he could not find some clue to Marcello's accident there,
but something had prevented him, some old dislike of returning to the
neighbourhood after such a long absence. He knew why he had not