Italian postmark; otherwise something written there might come upon her
with a shock. Rose and her husband glanced at one another. Each was
hoping that the other would find a way to begin.

Mary had come to feel very happily at home with the Winters in the short
time she had spent with them; and often at night when she dreamed of
being at the Villa Bella Vista she waked thankfully, with a sense of
escape from something unknown yet vaguely terrible. She could talk with
Rose and George Winter as with old friends, and Vanno too had the
feeling of having known them both for a long time.

They began to tell of their adventures with the Gonzales family at
Roquebrune, and Rose caught at the excuse to put off the moment she
dreaded.

"It was such fun up there!" Mary exclaimed. "I'd no idea that one bought
land by the square yard, or metre; but it's the way here, apparently;
and Vanno's going to give that handsome young man who's engaged to your
maid twelve francs a metre for his _terrain_, although there's no road
to it. But really that's a great advantage according to the father, a
large yellow old man with no hair to speak of, and only one tooth, round
which his words seem to eddy as water eddies round a stone in a pool.
It was fascinating to watch! We're to have crowds of fireflies, because
there'll be no motor dust; and the saying among the peasants is that the
_mouches brillantes_ search always with their lanterns, for a lost
brother. And birds will '_se coucher dans les roses chez nous_.' Isn't
that a darling expression? Think of having birds go to bed in your
roses! So you see, the land's quite worth the twelve francs, because
there's no road; and I almost hope there'll never be one, for Vanno and
I shan't want to come down often from our castle in the air, where the
view's so wonderful. There's no water there yet; but the most fun of all
to-day was the water-diviner the old Gonzales brought. He squatted on
the ground, holding an immense silver watch by a chain--a little gnome
of a man with a huge head thatched with gray hair. As he swung his
watch, tendons in his throat worked as chicken's claws do scratching for
worms; and whenever his watch began to swing violently it meant that he
was over a spring. He found three springs within a few yards of each
other, so we've only to dig, and get torrents of water."

"I'm sure you were children in the hands of those shrewd peasants," said
Rose, "unless your friend the cure wa