"For a book? Come over to Sicily and see us."
"I don't think you will want me there."
The trap in the roof was opened, and a beery eye, with a luscious smile in it, peered down upon them.
"'Ad enough of the river, sir?"
"Comment?" said Artois.
"We'd better go home, I suppose," Hermione said.
She gave her address to the cabman, and they drove in silence to Eaton Place.
III
Lucrezia Gabbi came out onto the terrace of the Casa del Prete on Monte Amato, shaded her eyes with her brown hands, and gazed down across the ravine over the olive-trees and the vines to the mountain-side opposite, along which, among rocks and Barbary figs, wound a tiny track trodden by the few contadini whose stone cottages, some of them scarcely more than huts, were scattered here and there upon the surrounding heights that looked towards Etna and the sea. Lucrezia was dressed in her best. She wore a dark-stuff gown covered in the front by a long blue-and-white apron. Although really happiest in her mind when her feet were bare, she had donned a pair of white stockings and low slippers, and over her thick, dark hair was tied a handkerchief gay with a pattern of brilliant yellow flowers on a white ground. This was a present from Gaspare bought at the town of Cattaro at the foot of the mountains, and worn now for the first time in honor of a great occasion.