knew how by daylight the mountains of Italy loomed cold in contrast to
the warm cultivation of the western hills, bare as a series of stone
shelves at an antiquary's, spread with a few rags of faded green to show
off some sparsely scattered jewels. But in the night she could see
nothing, and could hear only the moan of sea and wind, mingled strangely
with the high complaining voice of hidden streams. On the mountainside
twinkled the feeble lights of Grimaldi, a poor rock-town once the
fortress house of Monaco's princes; and after another plunge into the
darkness of folding hills and olive groves they passed La Mortola. Not
more than a mile or two beyond the village and the sleeping garden,
Mary, with her face always at the window, said:

"Now we are coming to the Chateau Lontana!"

Eve and her husband both leaned forward, straining their eyes to make
out a height rising above the road, and the black shape of a house with
towers which seemed cut in the purple curtain of the sky. There were
black nunlike forms of cypress trees also, which stood grouped together
as if looking down thoughtfully from their tall slopes, and old,
wide-branching olives were filmy as a gray cloud in the darkness.

The Monte Carlo coachman evidently knew the place, for he slowed down
without being asked, and stopped in front of a large double gate of iron
between glimmering columns of pale stone. This was the entrance from the
road; but an avenue ran steeply up the rocky slope, twisting in zigzags
to reach the house. Jumping down from his box the man tried the gates,
expecting to find them locked, but they yielded to a stout push, and a
moment later he drove in. The horses, tired from breasting the wind on
many hills, went up the incline slowly, the wheels grating over small
stones on the ill-kept drive. Mary thought the noise of hoofs and wheels
so sharp and unmistakable that she looked to see some eye of light
suddenly open in the black face of the house. It was not yet nine
o'clock, and the caretaker could hardly have gone to bed. But there was
no sign of life; and the dark chateau among crowding trees might have
stood in silence and desolation for a century of sleep, like the lost
palace of the enchanted beauty.

A flight of marble steps went up to a colonnaded terrace, and Lord
Dauntrey mounted first to ring the bell.

"Perhaps the caretaker has given herself a holiday, and we can't get in
after all," he gloomily suggested. His wife did