It is enough to say, in proof of the proverb, that when the Boy and I arrived at the villa in time for _déjeuner_, to which I had been invited over night, we found Paolo with Gaetà, under the red umbrella, unencumbered by any irrelevant Barons or Baronesses. Gaetà was looking pale and a little frightened. Her dimples were in abeyance, as if waiting to learn whether something had happened to twinkle about, or something which would more likely extinguish them forever. But the aëronaut might have invented an air-ship to take the place of ordinary Channel traffic, so great with pride was he. He appeared to have grown several inches in height, and to have increased considerably in chest measurement, as he sprang from his chair to welcome us, as if we had been long-lost brothers. "Congratulate me," said he. "The Contessa has just consented to be my wife." Gaetà clutched the arm of her rustic seat with a tiny hand upon which a new ring glittered, like a new star in the firmament. Her warm dark eyes, eager, expectant, deliciously fearful, were on the Boy. If the discarded favourite of yesterday had leaped to the throat of the accepted lover of to-day (her "Whirlwind"), she would have screamed a silvery little scream and implored him for _her_ sake to accept the inevitable calmly; she would have given him a reproachful flash of the eyes, to say, "Why didn't _you_ take me, instead of letting him carry me away? What could I do, when you left me alone, at his mercy--I so frail, he so big and strong?" Her glance would then have telegraphed to Paolo, "You have won me and my love; you can afford to spare a defeated rival who is desperate"; and perhaps she might even have thrown me a crumb for auld flirtation's sake. But the Boy did not, apparently, feel the least magnetic attraction towards Paolo's throat, or any other vulnerable part of the aëronaut's person. Nor did he stamp on the ground, crying upon earth to open and swallow the master of the air. I, too, kept an unmoved front; but then, being English, that might have been pardoned to my national _sang-froid_. There was, however, no such excuse for the mercurial young American, and flat disappointment struck out the spark in Gaetà's eye. The second act of her little drama seemed doomed to failure.