‘Let us descend to Spezzia,’ said Herbert to Lady Annabel; ’I love an ocean sunset.’

Accordingly they proceeded through their valley to the craggy path which led down to the bay.  After passing through a small ravine, the magnificent prospect opened before them.  The sun was yet an hour above the horizon, and the sea was like a lake of molten gold; the colour of the sky nearest to the sun, of a pale green, with two or three burnished streaks of vapour, quite still, and so thin you could almost catch the sky through them, fixed, as it were, in this gorgeous frame.  It was now a dead calm, but the sail that had been hovering the whole morning in the offing had made the harbour in time, and had just cast anchor near some coasting craft and fishing-boats, all that now remained where Napoleon had projected forming one of the arsenals of the world.

Tracing their way down a mild declivity, covered with spreading vineyards, and quite fragrant with the blossom of the vine, the Herberts proceeded through a wood of olives, and emerged on a terrace raised directly above the shore, leading to Spezzia, and studded here and there with rugged groups of aloes.

‘I have often observed here,’ said Venetia, ’about a mile out at sea; there, now, where I point; the water rise.  It is now a calm, and yet it is more troubled, I think, than usual.  Tell me the cause, dear father, for I have often wished to know.’

‘It passes my experience,’ said Herbert; ’but here is an ancient fisherman; let us inquire of him.’

He was an old man, leaning against a rock, and smoking his pipe in contemplative silence; his face bronzed with the sun and the roughness of many seasons, and his grey hairs not hidden by his long blue cap.  Herbert saluted him, and, pointing to the phenomenon, requested an explanation of it.

‘’Tis a fountain of fresh water, signor, that rises in our gulf,’ said the old fisherman, ‘to the height of twenty feet.’

‘And is it constant?’ inquired Herbert.

’’Tis the same in sunshine and in storm, in summer and in winter, in calm or in breeze,’ said the old fisherman.

‘And has it always been so?’

‘It came before my time.’

‘A philosophic answer,’ said Herbert, ’and deserves a paul.  Mine was a crude question.  Adio, good friend.’

‘I should like to drink of that fountain of fresh water, Annabel,’ said Herbert.  ’There seems to me something wondrous fanciful in it.  Some day we will row there.  It shall be a calm like this.’

‘We want a fountain in our valley,’ said Lady Annabel.

‘We do,’ said Herbert; ’and I think we must make one; we must inquire at Genoa.  I am curious in fountains.  Our fountain should, I think, be classical; simple, compact, with a choice inscription, the altar of a Naiad.’

’And mamma shall make the design, and you shall write the inscription,’ said Venetia.

‘And you shall be the nymph, child,’ said Herbert.