Renée looked at Delapine with her brown eyes filled with an enquiring look of wonderment, and then turned to her father to see what reply he would make, but Payot said nothing, he merely evaded a reply by tracing figures with his cane on the sand.
The professor sat down on a chair and became absorbed in deep thought. Renée looked alarmed, as she fancied he was about to go off in another trance. Suddenly he sprang up. "Excuse me," he said, "I perceive that our two friends Riche and Marcel are in trouble. I must go and rescue them," and without another word he donned his slouch hat and went out of the hotel grounds with rapid strides.
"What on earth is he up to?" said Payot.
"I can't imagine, but if Riche and Marcel are in trouble Henri will get them out of their mess. Didn't you hear him tell us he would?"
"But how on earth is he able to know when he is not there to see?"
"You must ask Henri that question," said Renée. "He will tell you."
It was a lovely winter's morning. The blue sky covered the deep sapphire blue of the Gulf of Genoa like a great turquoise dome painted here and there with long fleecy clouds, while the restless sea broke into tiny ripples as it lapped against the rocky cliffs of the shore, forming feathery waves like the white wings of the seagulls.
Marcel and Riche walked along the broad white carriage road, looking at the motor-cars and carriages as they rolled along with gaily dressed ladies, shading themselves with parasols of every colour. Here and there they encountered women from the country with bronzed, withered faces like Normandy pippins, carrying huge baskets to market balanced on their heads filled with fruit or vegetables. Then a score of noisy children ran pell mell across the road from the national school, shouting to each other as they ran with satchels on their backs filled with lesson books. A little further on a herd of goats obstructed the way, butting each other with their horns, or lingering at the roadside to nibble the herbage, while an Italian boy with bare feet ran hither and thither urging them forward with a stick, and calling his dog to assist him.
The road crossed deep gorges bordered with locust trees, pines and castania trees, while here and there were aged olive trees with their shrunken, gnarled and twisted trunks filled with the dust of years between the crevices of the bark. Wonderful limestone rocks towered up the hill on the left like mediæval ruined castles varying from a creamy white to pale lilac or deep crimson. At one spot a stream of clear water trickled down, besprinkling with its spray soft cushions of velvety moss embroidered with lichens, maiden-hair ferns, aspleniums, and the beautiful white star-like leucorium nicæense. Here and there bunches of convolvuli and cistuses unfolded their crimson and purple trumpets.
Further on the village of Roccabrunna could be seen nestling among the brown rocks and huge boulders which had fallen ages before, and become partly cemented to the hillside with undergrowth and soil. Capping the summit half hidden among the houses, the ruins of the mediæval castle of the Lascaris arrested his eye, surrounded by lemon and orange trees.