How, then, had she made any mistake?
The boy had the face of a young saint.
"Are you ready, my dear ?" she asked suddenly, as a far-off clock struck.
"Yes, mother, quite ready." "I am not," she answered with a little laugh.

"And Folco is waiting, and I hear the carriage driving up." She slipped from Marcello's side and left the room quickly, for they were going to drive down to the sea, to a little shooting-lodge that belonged to them near Nettuno, a mere cottage among the trees by the Roman shore, habitable only in April and May, and useful only then, when the quail migrate along the coast and the malarious fever is not yet to be feared.

It was there that Marcello had first learned to handle a gun, spending a week at a time there with his stepfather; and his mother used to come down now and then for a day or two on a visit, sometimes bringing her friend the Contessa dell' Armi.

The latter had been very unhappy in her youth, and had been left a widow with one beautiful girl and a rather exiguous fortune.

Some people thought that it was odd that the Signora Corbario, who was a saint if ever there was one, should have grown so fond of the Contessa, for the latter had seen stormy days in years gone by; and of course the ill-disposed gossips made up their minds that the Contessa was trying to catch Marcello for her daughter Aurora, though the child was barely seventeen.
This was mere gossip, for she was quite incapable of any such scheme.
What the gossips did not know was something which would have interested them much more, namely, that the Contessa was the only person in Rome who distrusted Folco Corbario, and that she was in constant fear lest she should turn out to be right, and lest her friend's paradise should be suddenly changed into a purgatory.