A thaw had followed the long frost and from the South, on eager feet, came Primavera, hooded still but clasping pale buds to her breast.
Birds sang as she glided by, anemones peered through the grass and in the olive trees young leaves danced in the sun like silver coins, tossed up by gay Mother Earth as ransom to the pirate Winter.
Light poured down from the sapphire sky, gilding the ivory city of towers as McTaggart drove through the winding roads, the Marchesa, still muffled in furs, beside him.
They had been to the borders of his estate, by vineyards planted on the slopes in terraces like a giant staircase, screened from the north by dark lines of cypresses, warped with the cruel wind; past fields of oranges and lemons, covered with screens of plaited reeds, to the agent's house whe
