Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/291

 'I told you the first day I saw you,' he said to her, 'that one could say of you what the angel Gabriel, in Boceaccio's story, says to Madonna Lisa.'

'I do remember,' said Musa, with a sudden flush upon her face. 'But that very day, when I looked in the steel mirror because you had said so, a scorpion ran across the mirror; and I believe that Joconda sent it—to remind me.'

'You keep her memory about you like a knotted cord of penitence!'

'No, no,' said Musa, softly; 'like a bit of sweet basil, that keeps away the evil eye.'

Este heard with no sympathy,

Without distinctly knowing it himself, it was just that 'bit of sweet basil' which he desired to pluck out of her hold; which held him aloof from her, and surrounded her with an invisible defence.

It was that sweet basil set against her breast which made her so unlike his dead love in Mantua; whose beauty had dropped to his wooing as the ripe nectarine drops at a touch off the sunny south wall.

It was but five or six o'clock; accurate time they could only keep by listening for the Ave Maria bells, morning and evening,