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"I daresay," he added, "the young ladies are not playing hide-and-seek in the Pineta all by themselves."
The road quickly draws nearer to it; and the large, heavy, velvet-like masses of dark verdure become visible. In a forest such as the famous Pineta, consisting of the maritime pine only, the lines, especially when seen at a distance, have more of horizontal and less of perpendicular direction than in any other assemblage of trees.
Well, this girl sees the Marchese and Bianca driving out alone together at that time in the morning to the Pineta that much we know sees them cheek by jowl together in a little bagarino, doing heaven only knows what billing and cooing. Now it seems to me that she would, under these circumstances, be likely to feel not altogether kindly towards the lady in possession, eh, Signor Professore?
More and more as you linger in Lucca it is his work you seek out, caught by its sweetness, its delicate and melancholy joy, its strangeness too, as though he had desired to express some long thought-out, recondite beauty, and, half afraid to express himself after all, had let his thoughts pass over the marble as the wind passes over the sand between the Pineta and the sea.
So! the Marchese Ludovico, who ought to be paying his addresses to the Contessa Violante in the sight of all Ravenna the Contessa Violante Marliani was great niece of the Cardinal Legate, between whom and the Marchese Ludovico their respective families had projected an alliance was, instead of that, going off on a partie fine with the notorious Bianca Lalli! A tete-a-tete in the Pineta!
"And where was she when the second lady passed, going towards the Pineta?" asked the lawyer again. "She was on the scaffolding in the church, which had been prepared for her to make her copies of the mosaics." "Do you know whether she saw, or was aware that the second lady had passed the church to go towards the Pineta?" "I know that she was aware of it; I was with her on the scaffolding.
She confessed that, when she had followed the path behind the church leading to the Pineta, for some little distance, she had changed her mind, and had turned off by another path, which had brought her back into the high-road not far from the church; and she said that she had then walked on till she came near the walls, where she turned aside to sit down on one of the benches under the trees of the little promenade; that she had sat there for some time she did not know how long; had then gone in to the Cardinal Legate's chapel, where she had conversed with the Contessa Violante, whom she knew from having often met her there before; and had at last returned home at a very much later hour than she had expected, and had found her friend Signora Orsola Steno uneasy at her prolonged absence.
In her palaces the great mirrors are still filled with the ghosts of the eighteenth century; on her Lung' Arno you may almost see Byron drive by to mount his horse at the gate, while in the Pineta, not far away, Shelley lies at noonday writing verses to Miranda.
Five days later Orestes, who had escaped from Pavia, was taken and put to death at Placentia, and on September 4 Paulus his brother was taken in the Pineta outside Classis by Ravenna and was slain.
And it might not be unlikely that in such a case they had been tempted to spend a few hours in the Pineta. And with these possibilities Signora Steno was obliged to tranquillize herself as she best might. She returned home not without some hope that she might find that Paolina had returned during her absence; but such was not the case Paolina was still absent.
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