"Ah, indeed!" he said. "That is pleasant. Is there one from Sicily? Scarpio promised to let me have the latest details of the great work." He took up the four letters and carefully studied the envelopes. As he came to the last, his thin face became animated. "Ah, this is satisfactory!" he exclaimed. "I knew he would not fail me. What wonderful--what fascinating work it must be!" He tore the envelope open and began to peruse the letter. While he scanned the opening lines, Clodagh watched him absently; but as the first page fluttered between his fingers, she gave a slight, involuntary shrug of the shoulders and, moving round the table, sank into the seat that the servant drew forward for her. Then, with an uninterested gesture, she poured out two cups of coffee. For a while there was silence save for the turning of the letter in its recipient's hand; the occasional snap of Mick's teeth as he attempted to catch a fly; and the thousand, impersonal sounds of lazy, outdoor life that rose about them. At last Milbanke looked up, his face tinged with mild excitement. "This discovery is very remarkable," he said. "Sicily will obtain a new importance." Clodagh smiled faintly. "In the antiquarian's eyes," she said with unconscious irony. There was no bitterness and no impatience in her voice. She spoke as if stating a fact that long familiarity had rendered absolutely barren. Looking back over the four years of her marriage, it seemed to her that her life had been one round of archaeological discoveries--all timed to take place at the wrong season. She vividly remembered the first of these events; the discovery of some subterranean passages in the neighbourhood of Carrara, which had taken place two months after her arrival in Italy, while life yet retained something of the dark, vague semblance usually associated with a nightmare. Still desperately home-sick and unreasonably miserable in her new position, she had eagerly grasped at Milbanke's suggestion that they should visit the scene of these excavations. But with this first essay, her interest in discoveries had taken permanent flight. The heat had been tremendous; the country parched and unsympathetic; the associations terribly uncongenial. She remembered the first morning, when she and Nance, stifling in their black dresses, had by tacit consent stolen away from the party of fellow enthusiasts to which Milbanke had attached himself; and climbing to the summit of a low, olive-crowned hill, had sat tired, silent, and unutterably wretched, looking out upon the arid land. But that excursion had been the prelude to a new era. Visits to various antiquities had succeeded each other with dull regularity, broken by long, uneventful sojourns in the green seclusion of the villa at Florence. Then the first break had occurred in the companionship of the trio. Nance had been sent home to an English school.