umbling deities of fountain and ilex grove had
no charm for her, and as a rule she and her friends preferred the
crowded Lung'Arno and Cascine on the days when there was music, but
this Thursday she had suggested that they should come across the
river.

"Daisy Vereker has promised to meet me, and as she is only here a week
on her way to school in Paris I should hate to disappoint her."

The two girls were lingering now about the grass arena, talking
volubly, whispering, giggling. Miss Vereker's maid, a yellow-haired
Swiss, sat not far off with her knitting, and every now and then she
called harshly to her charge to know the time.

Olive sat very still, her hands clasped, her eyes fixed on the far
horizon. She loved the old-world silence that was only broken by the
dripping of water in the pools. No birds sang here, no leaves fell at
the waning of the year. The seasons had little power over stained
marble and moss, cypress, and ilex and olive, and as spring brought no
riot of green and rose and gold in flower, so autumn took nothing
away. Surely there were ghosts in the shadowed avenues, flitting in
and out among the trees, joining hands to dance "_la ronde_" about the
pool of Neptune. Gay abbes, cavaliers, beautiful ladies of the late
Renaissance, red-heeled, painted, powdered; frail, degenerate children
of the hard-headed old Florentine citizens pictured in the frescoes of
Giotto and Masaccio. No greater shades could come to Boboli.

Florence was half hidden by the great yellow bulk of the Pitti palace,
but Olive could see the slender, exquisite white and rose tower of
Giotto, and the mellowed red of the cathedral's dome against the faint
purple of the hills beyond Fiesole, and she looked at them in
preference to the contorted river gods and exuberant nymphs of the
fountain in the royal courtyard close by.

After a while she opened her book and began to read. Presently she
shivered; her jacket was thin, and the air grew chilly as the
afternoon waned, but her reading absorbed her and she was surprised,
when at last she raised her eyes, to see that the Pitti palace was
already dark against the sky. Nurses and children were making their
way out, and soon those who lingered would hear stentorian shouts from
the gardeners, "_Ora si chiude!_" and they too would leave by one or
other of the gates.

Olive climbed down into the arena. Mamie was nowhere in sight, and
Daisy Vereker and her maid were gone too. Olive, thinki