“Yes,” Regina said, answering the look.  “He often called you by name.  He loved you once.”

She pronounced the words with an accent of pity, drawing herself up to her full height; and there was triumph in the light of her eyes.  It is not every woman that has a chance of saying so much to her rival.

“We were children then,” Aurora said, in the very words she had used to her mother more than two years earlier.

She was almost as pale as Regina now, for the thrust had been straight and sure, and right at her heart.  But she was prouder than the peasant woman who had wounded her.

“I have heard that you saved his life,” she said presently.  “And he loves you.  You are happy!”

“I should always be happy if he and I were alone in the world,” Regina answered, for she was a little softened by the girl’s tone.  “But even now they are trying to part us.”

“To part you?” Again Aurora looked up suddenly.  “Who is trying to do that?  A woman?”

Regina laughed a little.

“You are jealous,” she said.  “That shows that you love him still.  No.  It is not a woman.”

“Corbario?” The name rose instinctively to Aurora’s lips.

“Yes,” Regina answered.  “That is why I am left alone this morning.  Signor Corbario is at Saint Moritz and Marcello is gone down to see him.  I know he is trying to separate us.  You did not know that he was so near?”

“We only came yesterday afternoon,” Aurora answered.  “We did not know that—­that Signor Consalvi was here, or we should not have come at all.”

It had stung her to hear Regina speak of him quite naturally by his first name.  Regina felt the rebuke.

“I am truly sorry that I should have accidentally found myself in your path,” she said, emphasising the rather grand phrase, and holding her handsome head very high.

Aurora almost smiled at this sudden manifestation of the peasant’s nature, and wondered whether Regina ever said such things to Marcello, and whether, if she did, they jarred on him very much.  The speech had the very curious effect of restoring Aurora’s sense of superiority, and she answered more kindly.

“You need not be sorry,” she said.  “If you had not chanced to be here I should probably be lying amongst the rocks down there with several broken bones.”

“If it were not by my fault I should not care,” Regina retorted, with elementary frankness.

“But I should!” Aurora laughed, in spite of herself, and liking this phase of Regina’s character better than any she had yet seen.  “Come,” she said, with a sudden generous impulse, and holding out her hand, “let us stop quarrelling.  You saved me from a bad accident, and I was too ungenerous to be grateful.  I thank you now, with all my heart.”

Regina was surprised and stared hard at her for a moment, and then glanced at her outstretched hand.

“You would not take my hand if there were any one here to see.”