Clodagh turned to him impulsively.
"Larry——" she began again.
But the horses started forward; and the boy, lifting his cap, stepped back into the roadway.
Clodagh stooped forward, waved her hand unevenly, then dropped back into her seat.
While the horses covered a quarter of a mile, she sat without movement or speech. But at last, lifting his adoring eyes to her face, Mick ventured to touch her hand with a warm, reminding tongue.
The gentle appeal of the action—the hundred memories it evoked—was instantaneous and supreme. In a sudden irrepressible tide, her grief, her uncertainty of the future, her home-sickness inundated her soul. With a quick gesture she flung away both pride and restraint; and, hiding her face against the dog's rough coat, cried as if she had been a child.
PART III
CHAPTER I
It was nine o'clock on a morning four years after the wedding at Carrigmore; the season was late spring; the scene was Italy; and Florence—the city of tranquillity made manifest—lay at rest under its coverlet of sun and roses. In the soft, early light, the massed buildings of the town seemed to blend together until, to the dazzled eyes, the Arno looked a mere ribbon of silver as it wound under its bridges; and the splendid proportions of the Duomo became lost in the blue haze that presaged the hot day to come.
The scene was vaguely beautiful, viewed from any of the hills that guard the city; but from no point was its soft picturesqueness more remarkable than from the terraces and windows of a villa that nestled in a curve of the narrow, winding road between San Domenico and Fiesole. This villa, unlike its neighbours, was long and low in structure; and in addition to the stone urns, luxurious flowering plants, and wide, painted jalousies common to Italian houses, it boasted other and more individual attractions—to be found in a flight of singularly old marble steps that led from one level of its garden to another; and in the unusual magnificence of the cypresses that grew in an imposing semi-circle upon the upper terrace.