Months have passed since that afternoon and many things have happened. Casalmaggiore never got the Andalusian mare, for only Leone rides her, and he would not part with her for anything. Monsieur de Maurienne never came back from Paris, but managed to be sent to Vienna instead, and Donna Teresa is still an unprotected widow. The Countess of Montalto is herself again, and still in half-mourning for her husband.
During these hot August days she is living quietly at Montalto with Leone and his tutor; for she felt that if she did not come to the place now it would be harder to come back later and face its associations; and besides, Leone is to be the master when he is grown up, and he must begin to learn what that means.
He comes in at tea-time, a straight, square boy in well-worn riding clothes, his fox-terrier at his heels.
‘I wish the Captain were here, mama,’ he says suddenly. ‘It would be such fun to ride together. I don’t see why you shouldn’t ask him for a few days.’
‘Not now, little man,’ says Maria, pouring out the boy’s tea. ‘But perhaps he may come another year and stay a long time.’
She rises and sets the cup on a little table beside him with a good slice of bread and butter, and she stands over him as if to make him eat and drink. But when he bends his handsome head she stoops and kisses the back of his sturdy neck where the short brown hair is always doing its very best to curl.
Note.—The ‘Piedmont Lancers,’ to which Castiglione belonged, are purely imaginary, and are by no means meant for the ‘Piedmont Regiment,’ which would be more rightly classed with the Dragoons.
Transcribers Notes:
Period spelling and word usage (e.g. forwards instead of forward) were retained but obvious punctuation errors, letters added, omitted, or reversed by the printer were corrected. Consistent with the usage of the time, several words are hyphenated in one instance and not in another. These differences were retained.