Harry Musgrave and his wife were at breakfast, with a good deal of litter about the room.  Botanical and other specimens were on the window-sill, on the table was a sheaf of popular Italian street-songs collected in various cities, and numerous loose leaves of manuscript.  Harry had decided that Bellagio was a pleasant spot to rest in for a week or so, and Bessie had produced their work in divers kinds.  They were going to have a delightful quiet morning of it, when my lady tapped on the glass and invited Elizabeth out to admire the roses.

“Don’t stay away long,” whispered Harry to his wife, rising to pay his compliments.

He did not reseat himself to enjoy his tranquil labors for nearly an hour, and Bessie stood in her cool white dress like a statue of Patience, hearing Lady Latimer discourse until the sun had evaporated the dew from the roses.  Then Miss Juliana and Miss Charlotte appeared, returning from a stroll beyond the bounds of the garden, and announced that the day was growing very hot.  “Yes, it is almost too hot to walk now; but will you come to my room, Elizabeth?  I have some photographs that I am sure would interest you,” urged my lady.  She seemed surprised and displeased when Harry entreated comically that his wife might not be taken away, waving his hand to the numerous tasks that awaited them.

“We also have photographs:  let us compare them in the drowsy hours of afternoon,” said he; and when Bessie offered to hush his odd speeches, he boldly averred that she was indispensable:  “She has allowed me to get into the bad habit of not being able to work without her.”

My lady could only take her leave with a hope that they would be at leisure later in the day, and was soon after seen to foregather with an American gentleman as ardent in the pursuit of knowledge as herself.  Afterward she found her way to the village school, and had an instructive interview with an old priest; and on the way back to the Villa Giulia, falling in with a very poor woman and two barefooted little boys, her children, she administered charitable relief and earned many heartfelt blessings.  The review of photographs took place in the afternoon, as Harry suggested, and in the cool of the evening, after the table d’hote, they had a boat on the lake and paid the Lucases a visit before their departure for Como.  Then they sauntered home to their inn by narrow, circuitous lanes between walled gardens—­steep, stony lanes where, by and by, they came upon an iron gate standing open for the convenience of a man who was busy within amongst the graves, for this was the little cemetery of Bellagio.  It had its grand ponderosity in stone and marble sacred to the memory of noble dust, and a throng of poor iron crosses, leaning this way and that amidst the unkempt, tall grasses.