Chapter 3

THE GOLDEN GIRL

Shortly after the heat of the day had begun to subside the two friends set out for Terranova. Ricardo accompanied them--it seemed he went everywhere with Martel--following at a distance which allowed the young men freedom to talk, his watchful eyes scanning the roadside as if even in the light of day he feared some lurking danger.

The prospect of seeing his fiancee acted like wine upon Savigno, and from his exuberant spirits it was evident that he had completely forgotten his serious talk at the breakfast table. His disposition was mercurial, and if he had ever known real forebodings they were forgotten now.

It was a splendid ride along a road which wound in serpentine twinings high above the sea, now breasting ridges bare of all save rock and spurge, and now dipping into valleys shaded by flowering trees and cloyed with the scent of blooms. It meandered past farms, in haphazard fashion, past vineyards and gardens and groves of mandarin, lime, and lemon, finally toiling up over a bold chestnut-studded shoulder of the range, where Blake drew in to enjoy the scene. A faint haze, impalpable as the memory of dreams, lay over the land, the sea was azure, the mountains faintly purple. A gleam of white far below showed Terranova, and when the American had voiced his appreciation the three horsemen plunged downward, leaving a rolling cloud of yellow dust behind them.

The road from here on led through a wild and somewhat forbidding country, broken by ravines and watercourses and quite densely wooded with thickets which swept upward into the interior as far as the eye could reach; but in the neighborhood of Terranova the land blossomed and flowered again as on the other side of the mountains.

Leaving the main road by a driveway, the three horsemen swung through spacious grounds and into a courtyard behind the house, where an old man came shuffling slowly forward, his wrinkled face puckered into a smile of welcome.

"Ha! Aliandro!" cried the Count. "What do I see? The rheumatism is gone at last, grazie Dio!"

Aliandro's loose lips parted over his toothless gums and he mumbled:

"Illustrissimo, the accursed affliction is worse."

"Impossible! Then why these capers? My dear Aliandro, you are shamming. Why, you came leaping like a goat."

"As God is my judge, carino, I can sleep only in the sun. It is like the tortures of the devil, and my bones creak like a gate."

"And yet each day I declare to myself: 'Aliandro, that rascal, is growing younger as the hours go by. It is well we are not rivals in love or I should be forced to hate him!'" The old man chuckled and beamed upon Savigno, who proceeded to make Norvin known.

Aliandro's face had once been long and pointed, but with the loss of teeth and the other mysterious shrinkages of time it had shortened until in