She had poured cups of tea for Gerald and Brenda. All four were seated and refreshing themselves. It was a very large room, but a corner had been so arranged as to look shut in and cozy. There stood the tea-table convenient to the sofa and, surrounding it, a few chosen chairs in which one could sink and lean back and be comfortable. "Have you had a tiring day?" Brenda asked her mother, somewhat as if she were tired herself at the mere thought of such a day as she supposed her mother to have had. "No," Mrs. Foss answered briskly; "it's rather fun. I don't mean that one doesn't get tired after a fashion. Has Brenda told you, Gerald, how we have lately been occupied?" "Some new people, I think she said." "Yes, some nice, funny Americans." "Funny, you say?" "I say it fondly, Gerald. Let me tell you a little about them, and you will see what I mean. They are going to spend the winter here and wanted a house. What house do you think they selected?" "You really mustn't set me riddles, Mrs. Foss." "For years we have seen it every time we drive to the Cascine, and seen it with a certain curiosity--always deserted, always with closed blinds, in its way the most beautiful house in Florence." "The most--I can't think what house you mean." "Of course not, with your tastes. But imagine some nice, rich Americans, without either art education or the smallest affectation of such a thing, and ask yourself what they would like. Why, a big, square, clean-looking, new-looking, wealthy-looking house, of course, set in a nice garden, with, at the end of the garden, a nice stable. I was thankful to find the place had been kept up." "But is there--on the Lungarno, did you say?" "It is that house we have called the Haughty Hermitage, Gerald," Brenda helped him. "Oh, that! But surely one doesn't live in a house like that!" "Your excellent reason?" inquired Leslie. "I don't know,"--he hesitated,--"but surely one doesn't live in a house like that!" They had to laugh at the expression brought into his face by his sense of a mysterious incongruity. "No," he went on with knitted brows to reject the idea; "a house like that--one doesn't come all the way from America to live in a house which has no more atmosphere than that!"