adow now, and detests the Prince as openly as he secretly detests it.

It was scarcely half an hour's sail to Varenna, and ten minutes after
landing there, we were in the car, bowling smoothly along a charming
road close by the side of Lecco, the eastern arm of the triple lake of
Como.

For a time we ran opposite the promontory of Bellagio, with the white
crescent of the Villa Serbelloni conspicuous on the darkly wooded
hillside. Near us was an electric railway which burrowed into tunnels,
as did our own road now and then, to save itself from extinction in a
wall of rock. As we went on, we found the scenery of Lecco more wild and
rugged than that of Como with its many villas, each one of which might
have been Claude Melnotte's. Villages were sparsely scattered on the
sides of high, sheer mountains which reared their bared shoulders up to
a sky of pure ultramarine, but Lecco itself was big and not picturesque,
taking an air of up-to-date importance from the railway station which
connects this magic land with the rest of Italy.

"I shouldn't care to stop in this town," said Beechy, when Mr. Barrymore
slowed down before an imposing glass-fronted hotel with gorgeous
ornamentations of iron and a wonderful gateway. "After what we've come
from, Lecco _does_ look unromantic and prosaic, though I daresay this
hotel is nice and will give us a good lunch."

"Nevertheless it's the _Promessi Sposi_ country," answered Mr.
Barrymore.

"What's that?" asked Beechy and Aunt Kathryn together. But I knew; for
in the garret at home there's an old, old copy of "The Betrothed," which
is Manzoni's _I Promessi Sposi_ in English, and I found and read it when
I was a small girl. It was very long, and perhaps I should find it a
little dull now though I hope not, for I loved it then, reading in
delicious secrecy and stealth, because the Sisterhood doesn't allow
youthful pupils to batten on love stories, no matter how old-fashioned.
I hadn't thought of the book for years; but evidently its story had been
lying all this time carefully put away in a parcel, gathering dust on
some forgotten shelf in my brain, for down it tumbled at the mention of
the name. As Mr. Barrymore explained to Aunt Kathryn that this was the
country of _I Promessi Sposi_ because the scenes of Manzoni's romance
had been laid in the neighbourhood, I could see as plainly as if they
lay before my eyes the quaint woodcuts representing the beautiful
heroine, Lucia, her lover, Re