then--wait. 'Throned goddess'--"

"You ended the last letter with 'throned goddess.'"

"Curse the last letter! Why did you send it?" Odo sprang up and slipped
his arms into the dress-tunic his servant had brought him. "Write
anything. Say that I am suddenly summoned by--"

"By the Count Alfieri?" Cantapresto suggested.

"Count Alfieri? Is he here? He has returned?"

"He arrived an hour ago, cavaliere. He sent you this Moorish scimitar
with his compliments. I understand he comes recently from Spain."

"Imbecile, not to have told me before! Quick, Antonio--my gloves, my
sword." Odo, flushed and animated, buckled his sword-belt with impatient
hands. "Write anything--anything to free my evening. Tomorrow
morning--tomorrow morning I shall wait on the lady. Let Antonio carry
her a nosegay with my compliments. Did you see him Cantapresto? Was he
in good health? Does he sup at home? He left no message? Quick, Antonio,
a chair!" he cried with his hand on the door.

Odo had acquired, at twenty-two, a nobility of carriage not incompatible
with the boyish candour of his gaze, and becomingly set off by the
brilliant dress-uniform of a lieutenant in one of the provincial
regiments. He was tall and fair, and a certain languor of complexion,
inherited from his father's house, was corrected in him by the vivacity
of the Donnaz blood. This now sparkled in his grey eye, and gave a glow
to his cheek, as he stepped across the threshold, treading on a sprig of
cherry-blossom that had dropped unnoticed to the floor.

Cantapresto, looking after him, caught sight of the flowers and kicked
them aside with a contemptuous toe. "I sometimes think he botanises," he
murmured with a shrug. "The Lord knows what queer notions he gets out of
all these books!"

2.2.

As an infusion of fresh blood to Odo were Alfieri's meteoric returns to
Turin. Life moved languidly in the strait-laced city, even to a young
gentleman a-tiptoe for adventure and framed to elicit it as the
hazel-wand draws water. Not that vulgar distractions were lacking. The
town, as Cantapresto had long since advised him, had its secret
leniencies, its posterns opening on clandestine pleasure; but there was
that in Odo which early turned him from such cheap counterfeits of
living. He accepted the diversions of his age, but with a clear sense of
their worth; and the youth who calls his pleasures by their true name
has learned the secret of resisting them.

Alfieri's coming set