When at last the _colazione_ was over, and I had refused to take another drop of the mellow generous wine, grown on the neighbouring slope of Misilmeri, we wandered out into the pleasure garden which was the saddest-looking thing, for I believe that every joint in the masonry of the terraces and fountains and colonnades, and marble couches overlooking the city and the bay, was gaping and ready at a touch to pour out its mortar in powder. We sat down on the terrace which had the marble couches I have mentioned, commanding the view as far as the great dark mass of Monte Pellegrino, where the Carthaginian General maintained his army for three whole years against the Romans in Palermo, supporting life on the wheat grown on the broad top of the mountain, and the wild fennel and wild onions. At one end was a little mound, such as I think they would call a calvary, save that at the top of the path which wound round it there was no crucifix, but a little shrine to Santa Rosalia, the patroness of the city and of Donna Rusidda herself, Rusidda being one of the abbreviations, in which Sicilians delight, of this name. In this there was a seat concealed from view, even from the terrace, where I sat with the Prince while they went up for Will to be shown her saint. The Prince, desiring nothing so much as his sister's marriage with Will, and being at this time, like many of the Sicilians, a violent adherent of English customs, was content to throw opportunity in their way. He and I smoked. What passed between Will and Rusidda I had from Will afterwards, rehearsed with growing excitement, but I dare swear without any embellishment from the imagination, of which Will possessed little. "Well, W-Will," she began, "now you have seen my home, and you know that it is not because you are poor that I fear to marry you. We live on maccaroni in order to have horses for the old coaches in our stable, and men to take us out. Were it not for the little salaries which we have from the Court, we could not buy ourselves a change of clothes, and even the Queen is not very good at paying. She would rather buy things, and give them to you when she is tired of them. And this, though the Ambassador's wife is not too proud, a Princess of Favara--with an unconscious little access of _hauteur_--could not tolerate. Besides, picture me in a train of Her Majesty, who would make two of me!" Then, suddenly springing up from her seat, she led him to another side of the belvedere--for such practically the shrine was--and pointed to a beautiful little lake. "That," she said, "is the Mardolce, from which our family derives its name. Its founder was known in the Norman fashion as Tancredus de Mari Dulci; and that is where we shall have to come to, if we get much worse off." "Don't, Rusidda!" he said, putting his arm round her to draw her back to their seat. A little shiver passed through him. True love can picture any far-fetched ill reaching the loved one.