hair.

His toilet completed, she called out to the abate to go below and see
that the cavaliere's chocolate was ready; and as the door closed she
turned and kissed Odo on the lips.

"Oh, how red you are!" she cried laughing. "Is that the first kiss
you've ever had? Then you'll remember me when you're Duke of
Pianura--Mirandolina of Chioggia, the first girl you ever kissed!" She
was pulling his collar straight while she talked, so that he could not
get away from her. "You will remember me, won't you?" she persisted. "I
shall be a great actress by that time, and you'll appoint me prima
amorosa to the ducal theatre of Pianura, and throw me a diamond bracelet
from your Highness's box and make all the court ladies ready to poison
me for rage!" She released his collar and dropped away from him. "Ah,
no, I shall be a poor strolling player, and you a great prince," she
sighed, "and you'll never, never think of me again; but I shall always
remember that I was the first girl you ever kissed!"

She hung back in a dazzle of tears, looking so bright and tender that
Odo's bashfulness melted like a spring frost.

"I shall never be Duke," he cried, "and I shall never forget you!" And
with that he turned and kissed her boldly and then bolted down the
stairs like a hare. And all that day he scorched and froze with the
thought that perhaps she had been laughing at him.

Cantapresto was torpid after the feast, and Odo detected in him an air
of guilty constraint. The boy was glad enough to keep silence, and they
rolled on without speaking through the wide glowing landscape. Already
the nearness of a great city began to make itself felt. The bright
champaign was scattered over with farm-houses, their red-tiled
pigeon-cots and their granges latticed with openwork terra-cotta
pleasantly breaking the expanse of maize and mulberry; villages lay
along the banks of the canals intersecting the plain; and the hills
beyond the Po were planted with villas and monasteries.

All the afternoon they drove between umbrageous parks and under the
walls of terraced vineyards. It was a region of delectable shade, with
glimpses here and there of gardens flashing with fountains and villa
roofs decked with statues and vases; and at length, toward sunset, a
bend of the road brought them out on a fair-spreading city, so
flourishing in buildings, so beset with smiling hills, that Odo,
springing from his seat, cried out in sheer joy of the spectacle.

They h