rgeous frame.
It was now a dead calm, but the sail that had been hovering the whole
morning in the offing had made the harbour in time, and had just
cast anchor near some coasting craft and fishing-boats, all that now
remained where Napoleon had projected forming one of the arsenals of
the world.

Tracing their way down a mild declivity, covered with spreading
vineyards, and quite fragrant with the blossom of the vine, the
Herberts proceeded through a wood of olives, and emerged on a terrace
raised directly above the shore, leading to Spezzia, and studded here
and there with rugged groups of aloes.

'I have often observed here,' said Venetia, 'about a mile out at sea;
there, now, where I point; the water rise. It is now a calm, and yet
it is more troubled, I think, than usual. Tell me the cause, dear
father, for I have often wished to know.'

'It passes my experience,' said Herbert; 'but here is an ancient
fisherman; let us inquire of him.'

He was an old man, leaning against a rock, and smoking his pipe in
contemplative silence; his face bronzed with the sun and the roughness
of many seasons, and his grey hairs not hidden by his long blue cap.
Herbert saluted him, and, pointing to the phenomenon, requested an
explanation of it.

''Tis a fountain of fresh water, signor, that rises in our gulf,' said
the old fisherman, 'to the height of twenty feet.'

'And is it constant?' inquired Herbert.

''Tis the same in sunshine and in storm, in summer and in winter, in
calm or in breeze,' said the old fisherman.

'And has it always been so?'

'It came before my time.'

'A philosophic answer,' said Herbert, 'and deserves a paul. Mine was a
crude question. Adio, good friend.'

'I should like to drink of that fountain of fresh water, Annabel,'
said Herbert. 'There seems to me something wondrous fanciful in it.
Some day we will row there. It shall be a calm like this.'

'We want a fountain in our valley,' said Lady Annabel.

'We do,' said Herbert; 'and I think we must make one; we must inquire
at Genoa. I am curious in fountains. Our fountain should, I think, be
classical; simple, compact, with a choice inscription, the altar of a
Naiad.'

'And mamma shall make the design, and you shall write the
inscription,' said Venetia.

'And you shall be the nymph, child,' said Herbert.

They were now within a bowshot of the harbour, and a jutting cliff of
marble, more graceful from a contiguous bed of myrtles, invited them