"Sir," said the lady in Italian, "I need a postillion."

To Wogan's thinking she needed much more than a postillion. She needed
certainly a retinue of servants. He was not quite sure that she did not
need a nurse, for she was a creature of an exquisite fragility, with the
pouting face of a child, and the childishness was exaggerated by a great
muslin bow she wore at her throat. Her pale hair, where it showed
beneath her hood, was fine as silk and as glossy; her eyes had the
colour of an Italian sky at noon, and her cheeks the delicate tinge of
a carnation. The many laces and ribbons, knotted about her dress in a
manner most mysterious to Wogan, added to her gossamer appearance; and,
in a word, she seemed to him something too flowerlike for the world's
rough usage.

"I must have a postillion," she continued.

"Presently, madam," said the landlord, smiling with all a Tuscan
peasant's desire to please. "In a minute. In less than a minute."

He looked complacently about him as though at any moment now a crop of
postillions might be expected to flower by the roadside. The lady turned
from him with a stamp of the foot and saw that Wogan was curiously
regarding her carriage. A boy stood at the horses' heads, but his dress
and sleepy face showed that he had not been half an hour out of bed, and
there was no one else. Wogan was wondering how in the world she had
travelled as far as this inn. The lady explained.