ingling bells, and the slow climbing of the Cornice,
the road twisting up the face of the gray mountains, through perpetual
lemon-groves, with far below the ribbed blue sea. Not for them the
leisurely trotting all day long through the luxuriant beauty of the
Riviera--the sun hot on the ruddy cliffs of granite, and on the terraces
of figs and vines and spreading palms; nor the rattling through the
narrow streets of the old walled towns, with the scarlet-capped men and
swarthy-visaged women shrinking into the door-ways as the horses clatter
by; nor the quiet evenings in the hotel garden, with the moon rising
over the murmuring sea, and the air sweet with the perfumes of the
south. No. They climbed a mountain, it is true, but it was behind an
engine; they beheld the Mont Cenis snows, but it was from the window of
a railway-carriage. Then they passed through the black, resounding
tunnel, with, after a time, its sudden glares of light; finally the
world seemed to open around them; they looked down upon Italy.

"Many a one has died for you, and been glad," said the girl, almost to
herself, as she gazed abroad on the great valleys, with here and there a
peak crowned with a castle or a convent, with the vine-terraced hills
showing now and again a few white dots of houses, and beyond and above
all these the far blue mountains, with their sharp line of snow.

Then they descended, and passed through the luxuriant yellow plains--the
sunset blazing on the rows of willows and on the square farm-houses with
their gaudy picture over the arched gateway; while always in the
background rose the dark masses of the mountains, solemn and distant,
beyond the golden glow of the fields. They reached Turin at dusk, both
of them very tired.

So far scarcely anything had been said about the object of their
journey, though they could have talked in safety even in
railway-carriages, as they spoke to each other in Magyar. But Natalie
refused to listen to any dissuading counsel; when her mother began, she
would say, "Dear little mother, will you have some white rose for your
forehead and your fingers?"

From Turin they had to start again early in the morning. They had by
this time grown quite accustomed to the plod, plodding of the train; it
seemed almost one of the normal and necessary conditions of life. They
went down by Genoa, Spezia, Pisa, Sienna, and Rome, making the shortest
possible pauses.

One night the windows of a sitting-room in a ho