Isabella had one of those small revulsions of feeling which sometimes came to her when, it seemed, her natural kindness had been presumed upon. But the mood passed quickly, as she walked beside the beds of flowers. She did not like to think of these pure things yielding their essence to fat; yet, after all, it was an emollient process, not unlike the susceptibility of her sex to soft flattery. She wondered if to lie on a bed of suet would have a persuasive effect upon her own soul, coaxing it to part with its fondest secrets; she was quite sure that distillation by boiling would have the opposite effect. Gardeners certainly were very wise people; they had learned the value of cold oil over hot in extracting the truth from shy natures. How cruel the world was! Would it ever learn in her time the illogic of torture? Archduke Joseph, in his carriage not so far away, was already unconsciously formulating in his mind a like proposition. But he lived to answer it in an enlightened fashion. The orange grove was Aquaviva’s pride. He had nursed it through long years into a flourishing condition; for in those latitudes, where snow often fell thickly in the winter, it was no easy task to protect and cherish the sensitive trees. The grove was situated in a little green glade near the river. So enclosed was it within trees and juniper hedges, so hushed and fragrant were its depths, one might have thought oneself in an antique bower sacred to love--a place where silence itself stole into blossom, and needed no more than the shock of a butterfly’s entrance to shatter it into a myriad scented stars. So still was it that the bubbling coo of a dove, the plop of a fish in the stream hard by, sounded, when they sounded, almost discordant. For true it is that noise, like size, is relative. The man who lives amongst engines can find balm of nights in “barking dogs and crowing cocks”; a student in a voiceless hermitage is driven to madness by a bluebottle. The trees were all in flower; and, as if that were not fragrance enough, the grassy floor of the grove was sown everywhere with clumps of violets, many late blossoms on which still lingered out their beauty. They too needed protection, but in another way--protection from the sapping sun which the others loved and monopolised. So that here were light and shadow at their sweetest. As Isabella entered the grove, she came plump upon the minor apparition she sought--Bissy, to wit, in shirt and breeches and an enormous straw hat. He looked like a gnome, who had taken refuge from a crow under a great mushroom, and come away with it on his head. Its weight seemed to bow his little legs, withal his important spirit walked unconscious of the burden. Or, rather, stooped at the moment, for Bissy, hands on knees, was peering intently into a violet patch, a basket of blossoms standing on the grass by his side.