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By this time Beppo had the horses well under control, and at the lady’s invitation we all got into the carriage. She desired, she said, that her brother should thank us.

We went upwards, turning suddenly into a lateral valley. Here there was an excellent road, better than the Government highway. We had not driven many miles when we came in sight of a house, which seemed half Italian palazzo and half Swiss cottage, yet which had nevertheless an undefined air of England. There were balconies all about it, and long rows of windows.

It did not look like a private house, and Henry and I gazed at it with great curiosity. For me, I had already resolved that if it chanced to be a hotel, we should lodge there that night.

The Countess talked to us all the way, pointing out the objects of interest in the long row of peaks which backed the Val Bergel with their snows and flashing Alpine steeps. I longed to ask a question, but dared not. “Hotel” was what she had said, yet this place had scarcely the look of one. But she afforded us an answer of her own accord.

“You must know that my brother has a fancy of playing at landlord,” she said, looking at us in a playful way. “He has built a hostel for the English and the Italians of the Court. It was to be a new Paris, was it not so? And no doubt it would have been, but that the distance was over great. It was indeed almost a Paris in the happy days of one summer. But since then I have been almost the only guest.”

“It is marvellously beautiful,” I replied. “I would that we might be permitted to become guests as well.”

“As to that, my brother will have no objections, I am sure,” replied the Countess, “specially if you tell your countrymen on your return to your own country. He counts on the English to get him his money back. The French have no taste for scenery. They care only for theatres and pretty women, and the Italians have no money–alas! poor Castel del Monte!”

I understood that she was referring to her husband, and said hastily–

“Madame is Italian?”

“Who knows?” she returned, with a pretty, indescribable movement of her shoulders. “My father was a Russian of rank. He married an Englishwoman. I was born in Italy, educated in England. I married an Italian of rank at seventeen; at nineteen I found myself a widow, and free to choose the world as my home. Since then I have lived as an Englishwoman expatriated–for she of all human beings is the freest.”

I looked at her for explanation. Henry, whose appreciation of women was for the time-being seared by his recent experience of Madame of the Red Eyelids, got out to assist Beppo with the horses. In a little I saw him take the reins. We were going slowly uphill all the time.

“In what way,” I said, “is the Englishwoman abroad the freest of all human beings?”

“Because, being English, she is supposed to be a little mad at any rate. Secondly, because she is known to be rich, for all English are rich. And, lastly, because she is recognised to be a woman of sense and discretion, having the wisdom to live out of her own country.”

We arrived on the sweep of gravel before the door. I was astonished at the decorations. Upon a flat plateau of small extent, which lay along the edge of a small mountain lake, gravelled paths cut the green sward in every direction. The waters of the lake had been carefully led here and there, in order apparently that they might be crossed by rustic bridges which seemed transplanted from an opera. Little windmills made pretty waterwheels to revolve, which in turn set in motion mechanical toys and models of race-courses in open booths and gaily painted summer-houses.