On the very threshold of Casa Valdu, Odo perceived that unwonted preparations were afoot.  The shabby liveries of the servants had been refurbished and the marble floor newly scoured; and he found his mother seated in the drawing-room, an apartment never unshrouded save on the most ceremonious occasions.  As to Donna Laura, she had undergone the same process of renovation, and with more striking results.  It seemed to Odo, when she met him sparkling under her rouge and powder, as though some withered flower had been dipped in water, regaining for the moment a languid semblance of its freshness.  Her eyes shone, her hand trembled under his lips, and the diamonds rose and fell on her eager bosom.

“You are late!” she tenderly reproached him; and before he had time to reply, the double doors were thrown open, and the major-domo announced in an awed voice:  “His excellency Count Lelio Trescorre.”

Odo turned with a start.  To his mind, already crowded with a confusion of thoughts, the name summoned a throng of memories.  He saw again his mother’s apartments at Pianura, and the handsome youth with lace ruffles and a clouded amber cane, who came and went among her other visitors with an air of such superiority, and who rode beside the travelling-carriage on the first stage of their journey to Donnaz.  To that handsome youth the gentleman just announced bore the likeness of the finished portrait to the sketch.  He was a man of about two-and-thirty, of the middle height, with a delicate dark face and an air of arrogance not unbecomingly allied to an insinuating courtesy of address.  His dress of sombre velvet, with a star on the breast, and a profusion of the finest lace, suggested the desire to add dignity and weight to his appearance without renouncing the softer ambitions of his age.

He received with a smile Donna Laura’s agitated phrases of welcome.  “I come,” said he kissing her hand, “in my private character, not as the Envoy of Pianura, but as the friend and servant of the Countess Valdu; and I trust,” he added turning to Odo, “of the Cavaliere Valsecca also.”

Odo bowed in silence.

“You may have heard,” Trescorre continued, addressing him in the same engaging tone, “that I am come to Turin on a mission from his Highness to the court of Savoy:  a trifling matter of boundary-lines and customs, which I undertook at the Duke’s desire, the more readily, it must be owned, since it gave me the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with friends whom absence has not taught me to forget.”  He smiled again at Donna Laura, who blushed like a girl.