A turn in the path brought us suddenly upon a lawn, surrounded with shrubbery which at first had hidden it from our view. There, under a huge crimson umbrella, rising flowerlike by its long slender stem from the smooth-shaven grass, sat four persons in basket chairs, round a small tea table. Gaetà, in green as pale as Undine's draperies, sprang up with a glad little cry to greet us. The Baron and Baronessa smiled bleak "society smiles," and a handsome, fair young man frankly glared. Evidently this was the great Paolo, master of the air and ships that sail therein; and as evidently he had heard of us. Now I knew what the Baron had meant when he said to his wife: "Something _shall_ happen, my dear." He had telegraphed a danger-signal to Paolo, and Paolo had lost not a moment in responding. This looked as if Paolo meant business in deadly earnest, where the Contessa was concerned; for how many dinners and medals must he not have missed in Paris, how many important persons in the air-world must he not have offended, by breaking his engagements in the hope of making one here? He was fair, with a Latin fairness, this famous young man. There was nothing Saxon or Anglo-Saxon about him. No one could possibly bestow him--in a guess--upon any other country than his native Italy. He was thirty-one or two perhaps, long-limbed and wolfishly spare, like his elder brother, whom he resembled thus only. He had an eagle nose, prominent red lips, sulky and sensuous, a fine though narrow forehead under brown hair cut _en brosse_, a shade darker than the small, waxed moustache and pointed beard. His brows turned up slightly at the outer corners, and his heavy-lidded, tobacco-coloured eyes were bold, insolent, and passionate at the same time. This was the man who wished to marry butterfly Gaetà, and who had come on the wings of the wind, in an airship "shod with fire," or in the _train de luxe_, to defend his rights against marauders. His look, travelling from me to the Boy, and from the Boy to Innocentina and meek grey Souris, was so eloquent of contempt passing words, that I should have wanted to knock the sprawling flannelled figure out of the basket chair, if I had not wanted still more to yell with laughter. He, the Boy and I were like dogs from rival kennels eyeing each other over, and thinking poorly of the other's points. Paolo di Nivoli was doubtless saying to himself what a splendid fellow he was, and how well dressed and famous; also how absurd it really would be to fear one of us dusty, knickerbockered, thick-booted, panama-hatted louts, in the tournament of love. The donkey, too, with its pack, and Innocentina with her toadstool hat, must have added for the aëronaut the last touch of shame to our environment.