"
And Francesca--it must have been wilful--offered her the
maccaroni again.
Chapter 10
There was no way of getting into or out of the top garden at San
Salvatore except through the two glass doors, unfortunately side by
side, of the dining-room and the hall. A person in the garden who
wished to escape unseen could not, for the person to be escaped from
could be met on the way. It was a small, oblong garden, and
concealment was impossible. What trees there were--the Judas tree, the
tamarisk, the umbrella-pine--grew close to the low parapets. Rose
bushes gave no real cover; one step to right or left of them, and the
person wishing to be private was discovered. Only the north-west
corner was a little place jutting out from the great wall, a kind of
excrescence or loop, no doubt used in the old distrustful days for
observation, where it was possible to sit really unseen, because
between it and the house was a thick clump of daphne.
Scrap, after glancing round to see that no one was looking, got
up and carried her chair into this place, stealing away as carefully on
tiptoe as those steal whose purpose is sin. There was another
excrescence on the walls just like it at the north-east corner, but
this, though the view from it was almost more beautiful, for from it
you could see the bay and the lovely mountains behind Mezzago, was
exposed.
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