was one of the true kind.  It had been shut up close for months.  Months?—years!—it had an earthy smell, like a tomb.  The scent of the orange trees on the broad back terrace, and of the lemons ripening on the wall, and of some shrubs that grew around a broken fountain, had got into the house somehow, and had never been able to get out again. There was, in every room, an aged smell, grown faint with confinement. It pined in all the cupboards and drawers.  In the little rooms of communication between great rooms, it was stifling.  If you turned a picture—to come back to the pictures—there it still was, clinging to the wall behind the frame, like a sort of bat.

The lattice-blinds were close shut, all over the house.  There were two ugly, grey old women in the house, to take care of it; one of them with a spindle, who stood winding and mumbling in the doorway, and who would as soon have let in the devil as the air.  Master, mistress, la bella Carolina, and I, went all through the palazzo.  I went first, though I have named myself last, opening the windows and the lattice-blinds, and shaking down on myself splashes of rain, and scraps of mortar, and now and then a dozing mosquito, or a monstrous, fat, blotchy, Genoese spider.

When I had let the evening light into a room, master, mistress, and la bella Carolina, entered.  Then, we looked round at all the pictures, and I went forward again into another room.  Mistress secretly had great fear of meeting with the likeness of that face—we all had; but there was no such thing.  The Madonna and Bambino, San Francisco, San Sebastiano, Venus, Santa Caterina, Angels, Brigands, Friars, Temples at Sunset, Battles, White Horses, Forests, Apostles, Doges, all my old acquaintances many times repeated?—yes.  Dark, handsome man in black, reserved and secret, with black hair and grey moustache, looking fixedly at mistress out of darkness?—no.

At last we got through all the rooms and all the pictures, and came out into the gardens.  They were pretty well kept, being rented by a gardener, and were large and shady.  In one place there was a rustic theatre, open to the sky; the stage a green slope; the coulisses, three entrances upon a side, sweet-smelling leafy screens.  Mistress moved her bright eyes, even there, as if she looked to see the face come in upon the scene; but all was well.

‘Now, Clara,’ master said, in a low voice, ‘you see that it is nothing? You are happy.’

Mistress was much encouraged.  She soon accustomed herself to that grim palazzo, and would sing, and play the harp, and copy the old 

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