The hotel was the favourite hobby of Count Nicholas.  It was the dream of his life that he should make it pay.  While he lived in it, he paid tariff for his rooms and all that he had.  His sister also did the same, and all her suite.  Indeed, the working expenses were at present paid by Madame the Countess of Castel del Monte, who was a half-sister of Count Nicholas, and much younger.  The husband of Madame was dead some years.  She had been married when no more than a girl to an Italian of thrice her age.  He, dying in the second year of their marriage, had left her free to please herself as to what she did with her large fortune.  Madame was rich, eccentric, generous; but to men generally more than a little sarcastic and cold.

At dinner that night Count Nicholas took the head of the table, while Dr. Carson, the resident English physician, sat at his left hand, and Madame at his right.  I sat next to the Countess, and Henry Fenwick next to the doctor.  We made a merry party.  The Count opened for us a bottle of Forzato and another of Sassella, of the quaint, untranslatable bouquet which will not bear transportation over the seas, and to taste which you must go to the Swiss confines of the Valtellina.

“Lucia,” said Count Nicholas, “you will join me in a bottle of the Straw wine in honour of the stopping of the horses; and you will drink to the health of these gentlemen who are with us, to whom we owe so much.”  Afterwards we drank to Madame, to the Count himself, and to the interests of science in the person of the doctor.  Then finally we pledged the common good of the hotel and kursaal of the Promontonio.

The Countess was dressed in some rose-coloured fabric, thickly draped with black lace, through whose folds the faint pink blush struggled upward with some suggestion of rose fragrance, so sheathed was she in close-fitting drapery.  She looked still a very girl, though there was the slower grace of womanhood in the lissom turn of her figure, slender and svelte.  Her blue-black hair had purple lights in it.  And her great dark violet eyes were soft as La Valliere’s.  I know not why, but to myself I called her from that moment, “My Lady of the Violet Crown.”  There was a passion-flower in her hair, and on her pale face her lips, perfectly shaped, lay like the twin petals of a geranium flower fallen a little apart.

Dinner was over.  The lingering lights of May were shining through the hill gaps, glorifying the scant woods and the little mountain lake.  Henry Fenwick and the Count were soon deep in shooting and breechloaders.  Presently they disappeared in the direction of the Count’s rooms to examine some new and beautiful specimens more at their leisure.

In an hour Henry came rushing back to us in great excitement.

“I have written for all my things from Lago d’Istria,” he said, “and I am getting my guns from home.  There is some good shooting, the Count says.  Do you object to us staying here a little time?”