g girl all over his gardens and vineyards, talking to her in the
amiable, half-petting, half-mocking manner that he had adopted from the
first; and twice a week he gave her a music lesson.

"She has a splendid organ!" he would say.

"_Vous croyez_?" fluted Madame Petrucci, with the vilest accent and the
most aggravating smile imaginable.

It was the one hobby of the signorino's that she regarded with
disrespect.

Goneril too was a little bored by the music lesson, but, on the other
hand, the walks delighted her.

One day Goneril was out with her friend.

"Are the peasants very much afraid of you, signore?" she asked.

"Am I such a tyrant?" counter-questioned the signorino.

"No; but they are always begging me to ask you things. Angiolino wants
to know if he may go for three days to see his uncle at Fiesole."

"Of course."

"But why, then, don't they ask you themselves? Is it they think me so
cheeky?"

"Perhaps they think I can refuse you nothing."

"_Che!_ In that case they would ask Madame Petrucci."

Goneril ran on to pick some China roses. The signorino stopped
confounded.

"It is impossible!" he cried. "She cannot think I am in love with
Giulia! She cannot think I am so old as that!"

The idea seemed horrible to him. He walked on very quickly till he came
up to Goneril, who was busy plucking roses in a hedge.

"For whom are those flowers?" he asked.

"Some are for you and some are for Madame Petrucci."

"She is a charming woman, Madame Petrucci."

"A dear old lady," murmured Goneril, much more interested in her posy.

"Old, do you call her?" said the signorino, rather anxiously. "I should
scarcely call her that, though of course she is a good deal older than
either of us."

"Either of us!" Goneril looked up astounded. Could the signorino have
suddenly gone mad?

He blushed a little under his brown skin that had reminded her of a
coffee-bean.

"She is a good ten years older than I am," he explained.

"Ah, well, ten years isn't much."

"You don't think so?" he cried, delighted. Who knows? she might not
think even thirty too much.

"Not at that age," said Goneril, blandly.

Signor Graziano could think of no reply.

But from that day one might have dated a certain assumption of
youthfulness in his manners. At cards it was always the signorino and
Goneril against the two elder ladies; in his conversation, too, it
was to the young girl that he constantly appealed, as if she were his
n