As the visitors went away, a golden-haired girl of ten or twelve years shyly offered Tacita a white rose half opened, touched the fringes of her sash with timid finger-tips and touched the fingers to her lips.
Her delicate homage was rewarded with a kiss on the forehead. And, “Please tell me your name, dear child!” said Tacita.
The little girl blushed all over her face with a modest delight, as she whispered “Leila!”
“My recollections of school are all pleasant, with the exception of a few sharp lessons given me there,” Elena said. “I well remember one I received from Dylar the Eighth, father of our Dylar. I was one day sent on an errand which obliged me to go through the large dining-room where we eat now, and I saw a magnificent peach there on the sideboard. I could not know that it was the first and finest of a rare sort, and that Dylar himself, who was in another part of the house, had left it there in passing, and was coming again to take it out for exhibition. But I did know that we were never to help ourselves to anything to eat without permission, and that I had no right ever to take anything there. The peach tempted me, and I did eat. I was looking about for some place where I might hide the stone, when the Prince returned. He went at once to the sideboard, then turned and looked at me. No words were needed to show my guilt. I stood speechless in an agony of shame.
“The Prince looked at me one awful moment in silence. Then he took me by the hand quite gently, and led me to the room that has the commandments of God on the walls, and pointed to the words, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’
“He stood a moment beside me while I trembled, and began to sob, then laid his hand, so gently, on my head, and went away without a word. My dear, it was the most effective sermon I ever heard. You observe there was no sophistry used. It was stealing. It was many a long day before I could eat a peach without feeling as if I had swallowed the stone.
“The next time the Prince came, I ran weeping to kiss the fringe of his sash, and he kissed my cheek, and whispered, ‘Don’t grieve so, little one! Forget all about it!’ From that day to this I loved Dylar above all earthly things. He was forty years old and I was ten; yet he was the one man in the world to me from that day.”
While talking they had gone out, and were walking northward in the outside road on their way to see the kitchens. It was a paved street of very irregular width. One side was bounded by the straight line of the river parapet. The other, narrowed to ten feet in width between the Arcade and the bridge, widened sometimes to a rod or two. And everywhere above were gardens, cottages, steep paths and stairs, down-falling streams and trees single, or grouped, or scattered.
In one of the amphitheatres thus formed was a semicircle of small shops, each with a wide awning covering an outside counter. The goods were kept inside, and brought out as called for. A man or woman sat under the awning before each shop. One was knitting, another was making pillow lace; the man was making netting, and having but his right hand, the peg had been fastened to his left wrist, and he threw the cord in position for the knot as rapidly as if the air were fingers to hold it.
The kitchens were set high above the plain on the eastern side of a deep ravine running northward. Long buildings of only one story with attics were surrounded by orchards, gardens, and poultry-yards. There was a laundry, and countless lines of clothes out in the sun. There was a bakery. Beneath these buildings were the wine-caves, and the rooms for pressing the grapes. Farther up, on a rapid stream that came down and disappeared under the pavement, was a little mill.