The Warings at the worst of that genial climate had little occasion for fire; they had but to follow the centre of light when he glided out of one room to fling himself more abundantly into another. The Punto is always full in the cheerful rays. It commands everything--air and sea, and the mountains and all their thousand effects of light and shade; and the Palazzo stands boldly out upon this the most prominent point in the landscape, with the houses of the little town withdrawing on a dozen different levels behind. In the warlike days when no point of vantage which a pirate could seize upon was left undefended or assailable, it is probable that there was no loggia from which to watch the western illuminations. But peace has been so long on the Riviera that the loggia too was antique, the parapet crumbling and grey. It opened from a large room, very lofty, and with much faded decoration on the upper walls and roof, which was the salone or drawing-room, beyond which was an ante-room, then a sort of library, a dining-room, a succession of bed-chambers; much space, little furniture, sunshine and air unlimited, and a view from every window which it was worth living to be able to look out upon night and day. This, however, at the moment of which we write, was shut out all along the line, the green _persiani_ being closed, and nothing open but the loggia, which was still cool and in the shade. The rooms lay in a soft green twilight, cool and fresh; the doors were open from one to another, affording a long vista of picturesque glimpses. From where Waring had thrown himself down to rest, he looked straight through the apartment, over the faded formality of the ante-room with its large old chairs, which were never moved from their place, across his own library, in which there was a glimmer of vellum binding and old gilding, to the table with its white tablecloth, laid out for breakfast in the eating-room. The quiet soothed him after a while, and perhaps the evident preparations for his meal, the large and rotund flask of Chianti which Domenico was placing on the table, the vision of another figure behind Domenico with a delicate dish of mayonnaise in her hands. He could distinguish that it was a mayonnaise, and his angry spirit calmed down. Noon began to chime from the campanile, and Frances came in without her hat and with the eagerness subdued in her eyes. “Breakfast is ready, papa,” she said. She had that look of knowing nothing and guessing nothing beyond what lies on the surface, which so many women have.