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They are not accustomed to English ladies. If my daughter and I, who are residents here, can be of any service to you, I beg that you will command us. Eleanor felt nothing but an angry impatience. Could even this remote place give them no privacy? She answered however with her usual grace. 'You are very good, Madame. I suppose that I am speaking to the Contessa Guerrini?
Well, whatever else might have happened, the English lady was not yet happy. Of that the Contessa Guerrini was tolerably certain after a first conversation with her. Amid the gnawing pressure of her own grief there was a certain distraction in the observance of this sad and delicate creature, and in the very natural speculations she aroused. Clearly Miss Foster was the young American girl.
It has been supported by a succession of men, such as Tenon, Dufau, Foissac, de Lapouge, and Richet in France; Tiedemann and Seeck in Germany; Guerrini in Italy; Kellogg and Starr Jordan in America. The case is indeed overwhelming.
They drove up and down the miles of zig-zag road that Don Emilio had made through the forest on either side of the river, connecting the Palazzo Guerrini with the casa di caccia on the mountain opposite. The roads were deserted; grass was beginning to grow on them. The peasants scarcely ever used them. They clung to the old steep paths and tracts that had been theirs for generations.
Selvapendente the Paglia does the Signora see the bridge down there? veda lei, under Selvapendente? Those forests on the mountain there they belong all to the Casa Guerrini tutto, tutto! as far as the Signorina can see! And that little house there, on the hill that casa di caccia that was poor Don Emilio's, that was killed in the war.
His appearance was not attractive, and she doubted whether she could persuade Eleanor to see him. An idea struck her. Without consulting Mrs. Burgoyne, she took her hat and boldly walked up to the Palazzo on the hill. Here she inquired for the Contessa Guerrini. The Contessa, however, was out; Lucy left a little note in French asking for advice.
Burgoyne lived through the autumn; and in November she hungered so pitifully for the South that by a great effort she was moved to Rome. There she took up her quarters in the house of the Contessa Guerrini, who lavished on her last days all that care and affection could bestow.
'And here in this rough place in this heat how have you been able to look after her? said the young man passionately. 'We have done what we could, said the girl humbly. 'The Contessa Guerrini has been very kind. We constantly tried to persuade her to let us take her home; but she couldn't bring herself to move. 'It was madness, he said, between his teeth.
And she chattered on, in a patois not always intelligible, even to Eleanor's trained ear, about the widowed Contessa, her daughter, and her son; about the new roads that Don Emilio had made through the woods; of the repairs and rebuilding at the Villa Guerrini all stopped since his death; of the Sindaco of Selvapendente, who often came up to Torre Amiata for the summer; of the nuns in the new convent just built there under the hill, and their fattore, whose son was with Don Emilio after he was wounded, when the poor young man implored his own men to shoot him and put him out of his pain who had stayed with him till he died, and had brought his watch and pocket-book back to the Contessa
Presently they came to a small gate, and beyond appeared a broad, well-kept path, winding in zig-zags along the forest-covered side of the hill. 'This must be private, said Eleanor, looking at the gate in some doubt. 'And there you see is the Palazzo Guerrini. She pointed.
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