For all that it might profit me naught to learn who rode there, and why with all this haste, yet these were matters, I confess, on which my curiosity was aroused.
"Are you journeying beyond Cagli ?" I asked him presently, in an idle tone.
He cocked his head, and eyed me aslant, the suspicion in his eyes confirming the existence of the mystery I scented.
"Yes," he answered, after a pause.

"We hope to reach Urbino before night.

And you?
Are you journeying far ?" "That far, at least," I answered him, emulating the caution he had shown.
And then, ere more might pass between us, the leather curtains of the litter were sharply drawn aside.

At the sound I turned my head, and so far was the vision different from that which--for no reason that I can give--I had expected, that I was stricken with surprise and wonder.

A lady--a very child, indeed--had leapt nimbly to the ground ere any of those grooms could offer her assistance.
She was, I thought, the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen, and to one who had read the famous work of Messer Firenzuola on feminine beauty it might seem, at first, that here stood the incarnation of that writer's catalogue of womanly perfections.