"A thousand welcomes, Madama!" he said, speaking in English with a scarcely noticeable foreign accent--"Last night I heard you had arrived, but could hardly believe the good fortune! You must have travelled quickly?"

"Never quickly enough for my mind!" she answered--"The whole world moves too slowly for me!"

"You must carry that complaint to the buon Dio!" he said, gaily--"Perhaps He will condescend to spin this rolling planet a little faster! But in my mind, time flies far too rapidly! I have worked--we all have worked--to get this place finished for you, yet much remains to be done--"

She interrupted him.

"The interior is quite perfect"--she said--"You have carried out my instructions more thoroughly than I imagined could be possible. It is now an abode for fairies to live in,--for poets to dream in--"

"For women to love in!" he said, with a sudden warmth in his dark eyes.

She looked at him, laughing.

"You poor Marchese!"--she said--"Still you think of love! I really believe Italians keep all the sentiment of le moyen age in their hearts,--other peoples are gradually letting it go. You are like a child believing in childish things! You imagine I could be happy with a lover--or several lovers! To moon all day and embrace all night! Oh fie! What a waste of time! And in the end nothing is so fatiguing!" She broke off a spray of flowering laurel and hit him with it playfully on the hand. "Don't moon or spoon, caro amico! What is it all about? Do I leave you nothing on which to write poetry? I find you out in Sicily--a delightful poor nobleman with a family history going back to the Caesars!--handsome, clever, with beautiful ideas--and I choose and commission you to restore and rebuild for me a fairy palace out of a half-ruined ancient one, because you have taste and skill, and I know you can do everything when money is no object--and you have done, and are doing it all perfectly. Why then spoil it by falling in love with me? Fie, fie!"