"Brandolin can take care of himself," says Usk, carelessly. "He knows the time of day as well as anybody, and I don't know why you should be rough on it, my lady: it will be positively refreshing if anybody marries after one of your house-parties; they generally only get divorced after them." "The Waverleys are very good friends still, I believe," says Dorothy Usk, coldly. The reply seems irrelevant, but to the ear of George Usk it carries considerable relevancy. He laughs a little nervously. "Oh, yes: so are we, aren't we?" "Certainly," says the mistress of Surrenden. * * * * * At the first Drawing-room this year, the admired of all eyes, and the centre of all comment, is the Lady Brandolin. DON GESUALDO. CHAPTER I. It was a day in June. The crickets were chirping, the lizards were gliding, the butterflies were flying above the ripe corn, the reapers were out among the wheat, and the tall stalks were swaying and falling under the sickle. Through the little windows of his sacristy Don Gesualdo, the young vicar of San Bartolo, in the village of Marca, looked with wistful eyes at the hill-side which rose up in front of him, seen through a frame of cherry-boughs in full fruit. The hill-side was covered with corn, with vines, with mulberry-trees; the men and women were at work among the trees, it was the first day of harvest; there was a blue, happy sky above them all; their voices chattering and calling to one another over the sea of grain came to his ears gayly and softened by air and distance. He sighed as he looked and as he heard. Yet, interrogated, he would have said that he was happy and wanted for nothing. He was a slight, pale man, still almost a youth, with a delicate face without color and beardless; his eyes were brown and tender and serious, his mouth was sensitive and sweet. He was the son of a fisherman away by Bocca d'Arno, where the river meets the sea, amidst the cane- and cactus-brakes which Costa loves to paint. But who could say what fine, time-filtered, pure Etruscan or Latin blood might not run in his veins? There is so much of the classic features and the classic form among the peasants of Tyrrhene sea-shores, of Cimbrian oak woods, of Roman grass-plains, of Maremma marshes. It was the last day of peace which he was destined to know in Marca.