"No, no," said Fulvia, starting up. "We must set out again as soon as we have supped."
She approached the table and hastily emptied the glass of country wine that Odo had poured out for her.
The innkeeper seemed a simple unsuspicious fellow, but at this he put down the plate of cheese he was carrying and looked at her curiously.
"Start out again at this hour of the night?" he exclaimed. "By the saints, your excellencies must be running a race with the sun! Or do you doubt my being able to provide you with decent lodgings, that you prefer mud and rain to my good sheets and pillows?"
"Indeed, no," Odo amicably interposed; "but we are hurrying to meet a friend who is to rejoin us tomorrow at Peschiera."
"Ah—at Peschiera," said the other, as though the name had struck him. He took a dish of eggs from the fire and set it before Fulvia. "Well," he went on with a shrug, "it is written that none of my beds shall be slept in tonight. Not two hours since I had a gentleman here that gave the very same excuse for hurrying forward; though his horses were so spent that I had to provide him with another pair before he could continue his journey." He laughed and uncorked a second bottle.
"That reminds me," he went on, pausing suddenly before Fulvia, "that the other gentleman was travelling to meet a friend too; a lady, he said—a young lady. He fancied she might have passed this way and questioned me closely; but as it happened there had been no petticoat under my roof for three days.—I wonder, now, if he could have been looking for your excellencies?"
Fulvia flushed high at this, but a sign from Odo checked the denial on her lips.
"Why," said he, "it is not unlikely, though I had fancied our friend would come from another direction. What was this gentleman like?"
The landlord hesitated, evidently not so much from any reluctance to impart what he knew as from the inability to express it. "Well," said he, trying to supplement his words by a vaguely descriptive gesture, "he was a handsome personable-looking man—smallish built, but with a fine manner, and dressed not unlike your excellency."