From the outside of the coach had descended two passengers who, alone insensible to the attractions of mutton and trout, refused to dine—­two melancholy-looking foreigners, of whom one was Signor Riccabocca, much the same as we see him now, only that the black suit was less threadbare, the tall form less meager, and he did not then wear spectacles; and the other was his servant.  “They would walk about while the coach stopped.”  Now the Italian’s eye had been caught by a mouldering dismantled house on the other side of the road, which nevertheless was well situated; half-way up a green hill, with its aspect due south, a little cascade falling down artificial rock-work, and a terrace with a balustrade, and a few broken urns and statues before its Ionic portico; while on the roadside stood a board, with characters already half effaced, implying that the house was to be “Let unfurnished, with or without land.”

The abode that looked so cheerless, and which had so evidently hung long on hand, was the property of Squire Hazeldean.  It had been built by his grandfather on the female side—­a country gentleman who had actually been in Italy (a journey rare enough to boast of in those days), and who, on his return home, had attempted a miniature imitation of an Italian villa.  He left an only daughter and sole heiress, who married Squire Hazeldean’s father:  and since that time, the house, abandoned by its proprietors for the larger residence of the Hazeldeans, had been uninhabited and neglected.  Several tenants, indeed, had offered themselves; but your squire is slow in admitting upon his own property a rival neighbor.  Some wanted shooting.  “That,” said the Hazeldeans, who were great sportsmen and strict preservers, “was quite out of the question.”  Others were fine folks from London.  “London servants,” said the Hazeldeans, who were moral and prudent people, “would corrupt their own, and bring London prices.”  Others, again, were retired manufacturers, at whom the Hazeldeans turned up their agricultural noses.  In short, some were too grand, and others too vulgar.  Some were refused because they were known so well:  “Friends are best at a distance,” said the Hazeldeans.  Others because they were not known at all:  “No good comes of strangers,” said the Hazeldeans.  And finally, as the house fell more and more into decay, no one would take it unless it was put into thorough repair:  “As if one was made of money!” said the Hazeldeans.  In short, there stood the house unoccupied and ruinous; and there, on its terrace, stood the two forlorn Italians, surveying it with a smile at each other, as, for the first time since they set foot in England, they recognized, in dilapidated pilasters and broken statues, in a weed-grown terrace and the remains of an orangery, something that reminded them of the land they had left behind.