Outside, a young Tuscan contadino, passing on to meet his love, was singing in a fine clear voice one of the old Florentine stornelli—those same love-songs sung in the streets of the Lily City ever since the Middle Ages. She listened:
Fiorin di mela!
La mela è dolce e la sua buccia è amara,
L’uomo gli è finto e la donna sincera.
Fior di limone!
Tre cose son difficili a lasciare:
Il giuoco, l’amicizia, e il primo amore!
Fior di licore!
Licore è forte e non si può incannare;
Ma son più forti le pene d’amore.
She held her breath, then with sudden wild abandon, she flung herself upon the silken couch, and burying her face in its cushions gave herself up to a paroxysm of grief and despair.
Six weeks later.
Grey dawn was slowly spreading over the calm Mediterannean, the waters of which lazily lapped the golden shingle. Behind the distant blue the yellow sun was just peeping forth. At a spot upon the seashore about four miles from Leghorn, in the direction of the Maremma, five men had assembled, while at a little distance away, on the old sea-road to Rome, stood the hired motor-car which had brought one of them there.
The motive for their presence there at that early hour was not far to seek.
The men facing each other with their coats cast aside were the brown-bearded Marquess Giulio di San Rossore, and Prince Albert.
The latter, having left Florence, had learnt in Bologna of a vile, scandalous, and untrue story told of the Princess by the Marquess to the aristocratic idlers of the Florence Club, a story that was a foul and abominable lie, invented in order to besmirch the good name of a pure and unhappy woman.
On hearing it he had returned at once to the Lily City, gone to the Marquess’s palazzo on the Lung’ Arno, and struck him in the face before his friends. This was followed by a challenge, which Jack, although he knew little of firearms, was forced to accept.