As I walked up the path, brushing against the walls of vegetation, a strong, bitter odour reached my nostrils from the little, fresh box leaves which shone like beryls among the thick green.
“Ah! here is Violante!” exclaimed Oddo, touching my arm.
At the sudden apparition my heart gave a great bound, and I felt the colour rise in my face.
She was sitting under a lofty arch of box, with her feet upon the grass; a strip of meadow seen through the opening lay behind her, streaked with gold.
She smiled without rising, waiting till we came near; and she seemed to be offering her whole beauty to my astonished gaze in that calm attitude, as she sat on the green sward where perhaps her fingers had gathered the numerous violets ornamenting her girdle. As she stretched out her hand to me, she looked me full in the face, and said in a voice which was the perfect musical expression of the form it came from—
“You are welcome. We were expecting you yesterday. Oddo and Antonello brought us your gift instead, and it was no less acceptable.”
I said: “After many years I am once again entering your grounds, where I used long ago to accompany my mother, and already I begin to regret having stayed so long away. On leaving Rome I knew that I should find an empty house at Rebursa, but I did not know how richly Trigento would compensate for it. I owe you much gratitude.”
“We shall owe you gratitude,” she interrupted, “if you do not find our society wearisome. You know that this place is destitute of joy.”
“Even sadness has its benefit for him who understands how to taste it, has it not?”
“Perhaps.”