Lorna parted reluctantly from her father on Monday morning. He sailed by a very early boat, so that the sun had not yet risen high, as, after watching his vessel leave the harbor, she turned from the Marina to walk back to the Casa Verdi. Half of the little town was still asleep. There were no signs of life in the hotel, where the wistaria was blooming in a purple shower over the veranda, and green shutters barred the lower windows of most of the villas. A few peasant people were stirring about; three dark-eyed girls, as straight as Greek goddesses, were coming down the steep path from Anacapri with orange baskets on their heads, and their hands full of posies of pink cyclamen; a mother with a child clinging to her yellow-bordered skirt was taking an earthenware pitcher to the well for water; a persistent bell in the little church of S. Costanzo was calling some to prayers, and others were starting the ordinary routine of the day, attending to animals, cutting salads in their gardens, spreading out fishing-nets, or getting ready the hand barrows on which they sold their wares. In the gleaming morning light the beautiful island seemed more than ever like a radiant jewel set in a sapphire sea. Lorna had left the winding highroad, and was taking a short cut up flights of steep steps between the flowery gardens of villas, where geraniums grew like weeds, and every bush seemed a mass of scented blossoms. She was passing a small flat-topped eastern house, whose gatepost bore the attractive title of "La Carina," when she suddenly heard her own name called, and turning round, startled and surprised, what should she see peeping over the cactus hedge but the smiling face and blonde bobbed locks of Irene. The amazement was mutual.
"Hello! What are you doing in Capri?"
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm staying up on the hill!"
"And we're staying at this villa!"
"To think of meeting you!"
"Sporting, isn't it? Come inside the garden! I can't talk to you down there in the road."
That her chum should actually also have come to Capri for the holidays seemed a marvelous piece of luck to Lorna.
"We decided quite in a hurry," explained Irene. "Dad heard this little place was to let furnished, and took it for three weeks. The Camerons have taken that big pink house over there, with the umbrella pine in the garden. Peachy is staying with them. Isn't it absolutely ripping? I was only saying yesterday I wished you were here too. And my cousin Marjorie Anderson and her friends are stopping at the hotel, just down below. We're having the most glorious times all together. Here's Vincent! Vin, you remember meeting Lorna at school? She's actually staying in Capri! No, don't go, Lorna! Sit down and talk! Now I've found you I mean to keep you. We're not generally up so early, but Dad wants to catch the first steamer. He has to get back to Naples this morning."
"My father has gone already by a sailing vessel."