For a third time Peter bowed, a rather more elaborate bow than his earlier ones, a bow of respectful enlightenment, of feudal homage.

“You arrived this afternoon?” she conjectured.

“By the five-twenty-five from Bergamo,” said he.

“A very convenient train,” she remarked; and then, in the pleasantest manner, whereby the unusual mode of valediction was carried off, “Good evening.”

“Good evening,” responded Peter, and accomplished his fourth bow.

She moved away from the river, up the smooth lawns, between the trees, towards Castel Ventirose, a flitting whiteness amid the surrounding green.

Peter stood still, looking after her.

But when she was out of sight, he sank back upon his rustic bench, like a man exhausted, and breathed a prodigious sigh.  He was absurdly pale.  All the same, clenching his fists, and softly pounding the table with them, he muttered exultantly, between his teeth, “What luck!  What incredible luck!  It’s she—­it’s she, as I ’m a heathen.  Oh, what supernatural luck!”

III

Old Marietta—­the bravest of small figures, in her neat black-and-white peasant dress, with her silver ornaments, and her red silk coif and apron—­came for the coffee things.

But at sight of Peter, she abruptly halted.  She struck an attitude of alarm.  She fixed him with her fiery little black eyes.

“The Signorino is not well!” she cried, in the tones of one launching a denunciation.

Peter roused himself.

“Er—­yes—­I ’m pretty well, thank you,” he reassured her.  “I —­I ’m only dying,” he added, sweetly, after an instant’s hesitation.

“Dying—!” echoed Marietta, wild, aghast.

“Ah, but you can save my life—­you come in the very nick of time,” he said.  “I’m dying of curiosity—­dying to know something that you can tell me.”

Her stare dissolved, her attitude relaxed.  She smiled—­relief, rebuke.  She shook her finger at him.

“Ah, the Signorino gave me a fine fright,” she said.

“A thousand regrets,” said Peter.  “Now be a succouring angel, and make a clean breast of it.  Who is my landlady?”

Marietta drew back a little.  Her brown old visage wrinkled up, perplexed.

“Who is the Signorino’s landlady?” she repeated.

“Ang,” said he, imitating the characteristic nasalised eh of Italian affirmation, and accompanying it by the characteristic Italian jerk of the head.

Marietta eyed him, still perplexed—­even (one might have fancied) a bit suspicious.

“But is it not in the Signorino’s lease?” she asked, with caution.

“Of course it is,” said he.  “That’s just the point.  Who is she?”

“But if it is in your lease!” she expostulated.

“All the more reason why you should make no secret of it,” he argued plausibly.  “Come!  Out with it!  Who is my landlady?”