ere in bloom, and little green lizards basked on the
stones, whisking away in great alarm, however, if they were approached.

The general mental atmosphere of the place was genial and restful. Mr.
Greville was kindness itself to his young guests, and they had all
fallen in love with Carmel's mother. Her charming manners and gaiety
were very attractive, and the slight foreign accent with which she spoke
English was quite pretty. Lilias, who had before felt almost angry with
Carmel for feeling homesick at Cheverley, began at last to understand
some of the attractions which held her cousin's heart to Sicily.

"I'd rather have the Chase, of course," she said to Dulcie, "but on the
whole Montalesso is a very beautiful spot."

"So beautiful that I shouldn't mind living here all the rest of my
life!" said Dulcie, gazing through the vine-festooned window out over
the orange groves to where the white snow-capped peak of Etna reared
itself against the intense blue of the Sicilian sky.

CHAPTER XVII

Sicilian Cousins

The relations, who had assembled to welcome Carmel back, came often to
the Casa Bianca, and in quite a short time they and the Ingletons were
on terms of intimacy. Ernesto Trapani, a handsome young fellow, slightly
older than Everard, was studying at the University of Palermo, in which
city Vittore was at school, and the two brothers came home from Saturday
to Monday. Douglas Greville, a tall boy of seventeen who had been at
school in Paris, also went to the Palermo University for certain classes
in chemistry, which would help him afterwards in the conduct of his
father's business. The younger children of the various families, Aimee,
Tito, and Claude Greville, Rosalia Trapani, and Berta, Gaspare, and
Pepino Rosso, had lessons with private governesses, under whose charge
they had learnt to chatter Italian, English, and French with the utmost
ease.

On the Saturday after the Ingletons' arrival all these young people came
over to Casa Bianca, and it was decided to take picnic baskets, and go
out in a body to show the guests some of the sights of the neighborhood.
So a very gay party started off from the veranda. First they went
through long groves of orange and lemon trees, where peasant women, with
bright handkerchiefs tied over their heads, were gathering the fruit and
packing it carefully in hampers.

"You must simply live on oranges here," said Dulcie, accepting the ripe
specimen offered her by Doug