ue character. The little inn, which probably for years had
dispensed no other hospitalities than those of the _cafe_, that extended
from the darkly columned portico to half across the piazza, certainly
contributed slightly to allay the grumblings of the travellers. The
poorly furnished rooms were ill kept and dirty, the servants lazy, and
the fare itself the very humblest imaginable.

Nothing short of the unfailing good temper and good spirits of Julia
and Nelly could have rallied the men out of their sulky discontent; that
spirit to make the best of everything, to catch at every passing gleam
of sunlight on the landscape, and even in moments of discouragement
to rally at the first chance of what may cheer and gladden,--this is
womanly, essentially womanly. It belongs not to the man's nature; and
even if he should have it, he has it in a less discriminative shape and
in a coarser fashion.

While Augustus and L'Estrange then sat sulkily smoking their cigars
on the sea-wall, contemptuously turning their backs on the mountain
variegated with every hue of foliage, and broken in every picturesque
form, the girls had found out a beautiful old villa, almost buried in
orange-trees in a small cleft of the mountain, through which a small
cascade descended and fed a fountain that played in the hall; the
perfect stillness, only broken by the splash of the falling water, and
the sense of delicious freshness imparted by the crystal circles eddying
across the marble fount, so delighted them that they were in ecstasies
when they found that the place was to be let, and might be their own for
a sum less than a very modest "entresol" would cost in a cognate city.

"Just imagine, Gusty, he will let it to us for three hundred florins a
year; and for eighteen hundred we may buy it out and out, forever." This
was Nelly's salutation as she came back, full of all she had seen, and
glowing with enthusiasm over the splendid luxuriance of the vegetation
and the beauty of the view.

"It is really princely inside, although in terrible dilapidation and
ruin. There are over two of the fireplaces the Doge's arms, which shows
that a Venetian magnate once lived there."

"What do you say, George?" cried Bramleigh. "Don't you think you 'd
rather invest some hundred florins in a boat to escape from this dreary
hole than purchase a prison to live in?"

"You must come and see the 'Fontanella'--so they call it--before you
decide," said Julia. "Meanwhile