"I've heard a good deal that surprises me," replied the Countess. "In fact, the whole affair is a very grave scandal, and I, for one, don't mean to be dragged into it." CHAPTER TWENTY SIX. THE HOME OF THE MYSTERIOUS ENGLISHMAN. At half-past five o'clock that same afternoon, heedless of the Countess Moltedo's mysterious warning, I was standing by Lucie's side at the long French window that opened upon the balcony. Below, hundreds of visitors, mostly dressed in white, as is the mode of Leghorn, were promenading in the little pine wood that lies between the roadway and the sea, while beyond stretched the broad glassy Mediterranean aglow in the fiery rays of the Tuscan sunset, the mystic islands showing dark purple on the far-off horizon. It was the hour when all Leghorn was agog after the _siesta_, that period from two o'clock till five, when all _persiennes_ are closed, the streets are silent and deserted, and the city dazzlingly white lies palpitating beneath the blazing sun that blanches everything--the hour for the evening bath, and the stroll and gossip before dinner. Perhaps nowhere else in all Europe can be seen such a living panorama of beautiful girls as there, upon the Passeggio at Leghorn on a summer's evening at six o'clock, those dark-haired, dark-eyed, handsome-featured children of the people walking in twos and threes, with figure and gait perfect, and each with her _santuzza_, or silken scarf of pale blue, mauve, pink, or black, twisted around her head with the ends thrown carelessly over the shoulders. As the white veil is part of the costume of the Turkish woman so is the _santuzza_ part of that of the merry, laughing coral-pickers, milliners and work-girls of Leghorn. It enhances their marvellous beauty and is at the same time the badge of their servitude. Of all the people in the whole of proud old Tuscany assuredly none were so easy-going and vivacious, none so light-hearted and full of poetry as those Livornese people passing to and fro below us. The more I had dwelt among the Tuscan people the more I loved them. There is surely no other people on the face of the earth so entirely lovable, even with their many sad faults, as they; none so gregarious, so neighbourly, so courteous, kindly or poetic, none so content upon the most meagre fare that ever held body and soul together. Your _popolano_ even in his rags will bring a flower to a woman with the air of a king, and he will resent an insult with a withering scorn to which no regal trappings could lend further dignity. It is the land where Love still reigns just as supreme as it did in the days of La Fiammetta, of Beatrice, of Laura, or of Romeo--the Land of _Amore_--the sun-kissed land where even in this prosaic century of ours men and women live and die--often by the knife-thrust, be it said--for "_amore_," that king who is greater and more powerful even than good Vittorio Emanuele himself.