for your park, I see quite as much of it as I wish to see, from the
seclusion of my own pleached garden. I learned long ago the folly of
investigating things too closely, the wisdom of leaving things in
the vague. At present the park of Ventirose provides me with the raw
material for day-dreams. It is a sort of looking-glass country,--I can
see just so far into it, and no farther--that lies beyond is mystery,
is potentiality--terra incognita, which I can populate with monsters or
pleasant phantoms, at my whim. Why should you attempt to deprive me of
so innocent a recreation?"

"After the return of the family," said Marietta, "the public will no
longer be admitted. Meantime--"

"Upon presentation of my card, the porter will conduct me from
disenchantment to disenchantment. No, thank you. Now, if it were the
other way round, it would be different. If it were the castle and
the park that had gone to Rome, and if the family could be visited on
presentation of my card, I might be tempted."

"But that would be impossible, Signorino," said Marietta.

XV.

Beatrice walking with a priest--ay, I am not sure it would n't be
more accurate to say conspiring with a priest: but you shall judge.

They were in a room of the Palazzo Udeschini, at Rome--a reception
room, on the piano nobile. Therefore you see it: for are not all
reception-rooms in Roman palaces alike?

Vast, lofty, sombre; the walls hung with dark-green tapestry--a pattern
of vertical stripes, dark green and darker green; here and there a
great dark painting, a Crucifixion, a Holy Family, in a massive dim-gold
frame; dark-hued rugs on the tiled floor; dark pieces of furniture,
tables, cabinets, dark and heavy; and tall windows, bare of curtains
at this season, opening upon a court--a wide stone-eaved court, planted
with fantastic-leaved eucalyptus-trees, in the midst of which a brown
old fountain, indefatigable, played its sibilant monotone.

In the streets there were the smells, the noises, the heat, the glare
of August of August in Rome, "the most Roman of the months," they say;
certainly the hottest, noisiest, noisomest, and most glaring. But here
all was shadow, coolness, stillness, fragrance-the fragrance of the
clean air coming in from among the eucalyptus-trees.

Beatrice, critical-eyed, stood before a pier-glass, between two of the
tall windows, turning her head from side to side, craning her neck a
little--examining (if I must confess it) the