Oddly enough it happened that the least satisfactory of Helen Ambrose’s brothers had been sent out years before to make his fortune, at any rate to keep clear of race-horses, in the very spot which had now become so popular.  Often, leaning upon the column in the verandah, he had watched the English ships with English schoolmasters for pursers steaming into the bay.  Having at length earned enough to take a holiday, and being sick of the place, he proposed to put his villa, on the slope of the mountain, at his sister’s disposal.  She, too, had been a little stirred by the talk of a new world, where there was always sun and never a fog, which went on around her, and the chance, when they were planning where to spend the winter out of England, seemed too good to be missed.  For these reasons she determined to accept Willoughby’s offer of free passages on his ship, to place the children with their grand-parents, and to do the thing thoroughly while she was about it.

Taking seats in a carriage drawn by long-tailed horses with pheasants’ feathers erect between their ears, the Ambroses, Mr. Pepper, and Rachel rattled out of the harbour.  The day increased in heat as they drove up the hill.  The road passed through the town, where men seemed to be beating brass and crying “Water,” where the passage was blocked by mules and cleared by whips and curses, where the women walked barefoot, their heads balancing baskets, and cripples hastily displayed mutilated members; it issued among steep green fields, not so green but that the earth showed through.  Great trees now shaded all but the centre of the road, and a mountain stream, so shallow and so swift that it plaited itself into strands as it ran, raced along the edge.  Higher they went, until Ridley and Rachel walked behind; next they turned along a lane scattered with stones, where Mr. Pepper raised his stick and silently indicated a shrub, bearing among sparse leaves a voluminous purple blossom; and at a rickety canter the last stage of the way was accomplished.

The villa was a roomy white house, which, as is the case with most continental houses, looked to an English eye frail, ramshackle, and absurdly frivolous, more like a pagoda in a tea-garden than a place where one slept.  The garden called urgently for the services of gardener.  Bushes waved their branches across the paths, and the blades of grass, with spaces of earth between them, could be counted.  In the circular piece of ground in front of the verandah were two cracked vases, from which red flowers drooped, with a stone fountain between them, now parched in the sun.  The circular garden led to a long garden, where the gardener’s shears had scarcely been, unless now and then, when he cut a bough of blossom for his beloved.  A few tall trees shaded it, and round bushes with wax-like flowers mobbed their heads together in a row.  A garden smoothly laid with turf, divided by thick hedges, with raised beds of bright flowers, such as we keep within walls in England, would have been out of place upon the side of this bare hill.  There was no ugliness to shut out, and the villa looked straight across the shoulder of a slope, ribbed with olive trees, to the sea.