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Torrebianca, I need n't remind those who are familiar with Sampaolo, is the name of a mountain, a bare, white, tower-like peak of rock, that rises in the middle of the island, the apex of the ridge separating the coast of Vallanza from the coast of Orca. "Madame Torrebianca? La Nobil Donna Susanna Torrebianca?" She tried the name on her tongue. "Yes, for an impromptu, Torrebianca is n't bad.
Its fragrance was more than a mere fragrance there was something of herself in it, something poignantly, intimately personal. By and by he put the fan in his pocket, in the inside pocket of his coat feathers downwards, the better to conceal it. Then he too joined the group at the piano. In their sitting-room in the Hôtel de Rome, at Vallanza, Anthony and Adrian were waiting for their breakfast.
In winter they go to Rome, or to Nice, or to England for the hunting; but in summer they pervade Sampaolo, where they have a villa just outside Vallanza, as well as the dark old palace of their family in the town. The twin brothers, Franco and Baldo del Ponte who that has once met them can ever forget them? To begin with, they are giants six-feet-four, and stalwart in proportion.
"S. del Valdeschi della Spina, Contessa di Sampaolo." "Al Illmo. Signore, S. E. il Conte di Sampaolo, Alla Villa del Ponte, Vallanza." Anthony, his cousin's letter held at arm's length, turned to the white-bearded Capuchin, where he stood in his brown habit, patiently waiting, with his clasped hands covered by his sleeves.
On the twenty-second anniversary of Susanna's birth, old Commendatore Fregi, her guardian, whose charge, by the provisions of her father's will, on that day terminated, gave a festa in her honour at his villa in Vallanza.
All at once, between the two promontories that form the entrance to the bay, the Capo del Papa and the Capo del Turco, appeared, heading for Vallanza, a white steamer, clearly, from its size and lines, a yacht a very bright and gay object to look upon, as it gleamed in the sun and crisped the blue waters.
Seven tiny sailing-boats, monotypes, the entire fleet, indeed, of the Reale Yacht Club d'Ilaria had described a triangle in the bay, with Vallanza, Presa, and Veno as its points; and I need n't tell anyone who knows the island of Sampaolo that the Marchese Baldo del Ponte's Mermaid, English name and all, had come home easily the first.
They walked on for some paces in silence. "In the Palazzo Rosso at Vallanza, to this day," she continued, "you will be shown the throne-room, with the great scarlet throne, and the gilded coronet topping the canopy above it. But the Counts of Sampaolo were good men and wise rulers; and, under them, for more than seven hundred years, the island was free, prosperous, and happy.
At last you pass between two promontories, the Capo del Turco and the Capo del Papa, from the summits of which two great Crucifixes look down, and you enter the Laguna di Vallanza, a land-locked bay, tranquil as a lake.
And the view was magnificent Vallanza below, its red roofs burning in the sun, the purple bay, the olive-mantled hills, with a haze of gold-dust and pearl-dust brooding over them, and white-walled villages shining in twenty improbable situations, with their dark cypresses and slender campanili.
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