At the turn of the road towards Spellino I managed to set their heads to the hill, and the steep ascent soon brought the stretching gallop of the horses to a stand-still.

It seemed a necessary thing that there should be a lady inside.  I should have been content with any kind of lady, but this one was both fair and young, though neither discomposed nor terrified, as in such cases is the custom.

“I trust Madame is not disarranged,” I said in my poor French, as I went from the horses’ heads to the carriage and assisted the lady to alight.

“It serves me right for bringing English horses here without a coachman to match,” she said in excellent English.  “Such international misalliances do not succeed.  Italian horses would not have startled at an old beggar in a red coat, and an English coachman would not have thrown down the reins and jumped into the ditch.  Ah, here we have our Beppo”—­she turned to a flying figure, which came labouring up hill.  To him the lady gave the charge of the panting horses, to me her hand.

“I must trouble you for your safe-conduct to the hotel,” she said.  Now, though her words were English, her manner of speech was not.

By this time Henry had come up, and him I had to present, which was like to prove a difficulty to me, who did not yet know the name of the lady.  But she, seeing my embarrassment, took pity on me, saying—­

“I am the Countess Castel del Monte,” looking at me out of eyes so broadly dark, that they seemed in certain lights violet, like the deeps of the wine-hearted Greek sea.

By this time Beppo had the horses well under control, and at the lady’s invitation we all got into the carriage.  She desired, she said, that her brother should thank us.

We went upwards, turning suddenly into a lateral valley.  Here there was an excellent road, better than the Government highway.  We had not driven many miles when we came in sight of a house, which seemed half Italian palazzo and half Swiss cottage, yet which had nevertheless an undefined air of England.  There were balconies all about it, and long rows of windows.

It did not look like a private house, and Henry and I gazed at it with great curiosity.  For me, I had already resolved that if it chanced to be a hotel, we should lodge there that night.

The Countess talked to us all the way, pointing out the objects of interest in the long row of peaks which backed the Val Bergel with their snows and flashing Alpine steeps.  I longed to ask a question, but dared not.  “Hotel” was what she had said, yet this place had scarcely the look of one.  But she afforded us an answer of her own accord.

“You must know that my brother has a fancy of playing at landlord,” she said, looking at us in a playful way.  “He has built a hostel for the English and the Italians of the Court.  It was to be a new Paris, was it not so?  And no doubt it would have been, but that the distance was over great.  It was indeed almost a Paris in the happy days of one summer.  But since then I have been almost the only guest.”