top of the first flight of stairs, and if the visitor is admitted he will find a welcome which is not necessarily cold.  There are several rooms, some dark and mostly stuffy—­a reception-room adorned with horsehair chairs, wool-work stools, and a stove that is never lit—­German bad taste without German domesticity broods over that room; also a living-room, which insensibly glides into a bedroom when the refining influence of hospitality is absent, and real bedrooms; and last, but not least, the loggia, where you can live day and night if you feel inclined, drinking vermouth and smoking cigarettes, with leagues of olive-trees and vineyards and blue-green hills to watch you.

It was in this house that the brief and inevitable tragedy of Lilia’s married life took place.  She made Gino buy it for her, because it was there she had first seen him sitting on the mud wall that faced the Volterra gate.  She remembered how the evening sun had struck his hair, and how he had smiled down at her, and being both sentimental and unrefined, was determined to have the man and the place together.  Things in Italy are cheap for an Italian, and, though he would have preferred a house in the piazza, or better still a house at Siena, or, bliss above bliss, a house at Leghorn, he did as she asked, thinking that perhaps she showed her good taste in preferring so retired an abode.

The house was far too big for them, and there was a general concourse of his relatives to fill it up.  His father wished to make it a patriarchal concern, where all the family should have their rooms and meet together for meals, and was perfectly willing to give up the new practice at Poggibonsi and preside.  Gino was quite willing too, for he was an affectionate youth who liked a large home-circle, and he told it as a pleasant bit of news to Lilia, who did not attempt to conceal her horror.

At once he was horrified too; saw that the idea was monstrous; abused himself to her for having suggested it; rushed off to tell his father that it was impossible.  His father complained that prosperity was already corrupting him and making him unsympathetic and hard; his mother cried; his sisters accused him of blocking their social advance.  He was apologetic, and even cringing, until they turned on Lilia.  Then he turned on them, saying that they could not understand, much less associate with, the English lady who was his wife; that there should be one master in that house—­ himself.

Lilia praised and petted him on his return, calling him brave and a hero and other endearing epithets.  But he was rather blue when his clan left Monteriano in much dignity—­a dignity which was not at all impaired by the acceptance of a cheque.  They took the cheque not to Poggibonsi, after all, but to Empoli—­a lively, dusty town some twenty miles off.  There they settled down in comfort, and the sisters said they had been driven to it by Gino.