ith their shrill voices down the
hill towards Santa Lucia, where, by the waterside and the crowding
white yachts, the itinerant musicians took it into the keeping of their
guitars, their mandolins, their squeaky fiddles, and their hot and
tremulous voices. The "Valse Bleu," "Santa Lucia," "Addio, mia bella
Napoli," "La Frangese," "Sole Mio," "Marechiaro," "Carolina," "La
Ciociara"; with the chain of lights the chain of songs was woven round
the bay; from the Eldorado, past the Hotel de Vesuve, the Hotel Royal,
the Victoria, to the tree-shaded alleys of the Villa Nazionale, to the
Mergellina, where the naked urchins of the fisherfolk took their evening
bath among the resting boats, to the "Scoglio di Frisio," and upwards to
the Ristorante della Stella, and downwards again to the Ristorante del
Mare, and so away to the point, to the Antico Giuseppone.

Long and brilliant was the chain of lamps, and long and ardent was the
chain of melodies melting one into the other, and stretching to the wide
darkness of the night and to the great stillness of the sea. The night
was alive with music, with the voices that beat like hearts over-charged
with sentimental longings.

But at the point where stood the Antico Giuseppone the lights and the
songs died out. And beyond there was the mystery, the stillness of the
sea.

And there, beyond the chain of lights, the chain of melodies, the islet
lay in its delicate isolation; nevertheless, it, too, was surely not
unaware of the coming of summer. For even here, Nature ran up her
flag to honor her new festival. High up above the rock on the mainland
opposite there was a golden glory of ginestra, the broom plant, an
expanse of gold so brilliant, so daring in these bare surroundings, that
Vere said, when she saw it:

"There is something cruel even in beauty, Madre. Do you like successful
audacity?"

"I think I used to when I was your age," said Hermione. "Anything
audacious was attractive to me then. But now I sometimes see through it
too easily, and want something quieter and a little more mysterious."

"The difference between the Marchesino and Monsieur Emile?" said the
girl, with a little laugh.

Hermione laughed, too.

"Do you think Monsieur Emile mysterious?" she asked.

"Yes--certainly. Don't you?"

"I have known him so intimately for so many years."

"Well, but that does not change him. Does it?"

"No. But it may make him appear very differently to me from the way in
whic