o read aloud to him, and one spell, when his mind for some reason or
other was running on Italy, every book he chose had the scene laid here.
There were whole pages of description, and anything so lovely, so
luscious, as the places and people described I never did dream. I didn't
understand more than a quarter, but I swallowed it all and gloated. The
woman who wrote those books certainly did have an imagination. O
Antonia, let me meet you and have a good look at you so I can tell
a--hm, the owner of an imagination when I see one again!"

"Antonia, did you say?" The consul smiled.

"That was the writer's name. You know the books I mean?"

"I have read a work or two of Antonia's, yes. She lives near Florence,
you know, on another of these little hills."

"Oh, does she!"

"Her name is Mrs. Grangeon. She is an Englishwoman, with an
extraordinary sense of, and feeling for, Italy. She is, at her best, a
poet; at her worst, slightly deficient, perhaps, in humor. But her
passion for Italy is genuine, and I have no doubt she sees it as glowing
as the pictures she makes of it."

"Her books are 'grand, John'! If I never had come here, I never should
have appreciated them or her--making up that wonderful world, all
pomegranates and jasmin-stars, and curls like clustering blue-black
grapes, and staturesque limbs, out of the back of her head. Yes, and the
golden dust of centuries, and time's mellow caressing touch--oh, I wish
I could remember it all!"

"Mrs. Hawthorne, we must take you in hand. Be it ours to initiate you.
Come, what have you been to see?"

"Treasures of art? We haven't had time yet. We've been getting a house
fit to live in. When you asked me how I liked Florence, I ought to have
begun by that end. I love my house, Mr. Foss. I love my garden. I love
the Lungarno. And the Casheeny. And Boboly. And the drive up here. And
the stores! I positively dote on those little bits of stores on the
jewelers' bridge."

"Well, well, that's quite enough to begin with."

"Now that we're going to have some time to spare, we mean to go
sight-seeing like other folks."

"How I wish, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, that I were not such a busy man!
But"--Mr. Foss had a look of bright inspiration--"should I on that
account be dejected? Here is Mr. Fane--"

He turned to Gerald, who, after bringing up Mrs. Hawthorne, had stood
near, a silent third, waiting to act further as her escort by and by.
Meanwhile he had been listening with a vari