Vera was able to spend an hour in the yew tree enclosure in the morning freshness, between six and seven. She had telegraphed her order for a hundred white roses to the San Marco florist the day before, and the flowers were ready for her in a light, spacious basket, in the hall of the hotel, when she came downstairs in the dim sunrise. "It is the last time," she said to herself, as she covered the great marble slab with her roses, and stooped to lay cold lips on the cold stone. "Giulia--Mario," she murmured tenderly, with lingering lips. "I am not afraid," she said to herself. "I know that he has forgiven me." Maid and footman and luggage went by the morning train; and half an hour after Vera and her friend left San Marco, in a carriage that was to take them to Ventimiglia. By this means they had the drive in the morning sunshine, and escaped the long wait at the frontier, only entering the dismal station five minutes before their train left Italy. They spent that night in Marseilles, where Susan Amphlett insisted upon seeing the Cannebière by lamplight; and they were in Paris on the following evening, and in London the next day. "And now you are going to begin a splendid season," said Susie, "in this dear old house. The rooms look mere pigeon-holes after your Roman villa; but there's no place like London. And I really think Claude is right. The Villa Provana is much too big, and just a wee bit eerie. It suggests ghosts, if one does not see them. One of those sweet young Bersaglieri told me that your husband's father made a man fight a duel to the death with him in one of those weird upper rooms; and that the stamping of their feet and the rattle of their rapiers is heard at a quarter past two on every fifteenth of November. When I heard the story I felt rather glad I did not come to you till December. Aren't you pleased to be home, Vera, in these cosy drawing-rooms?" Everything in life is a question of contrast, and after the Villa Provana the drawing-room in Portland Place, with its five long windows and perspective of other drawing-rooms through a curtained archway, looked as snug as a suburban parlour. "Aren't you glad to be home?" persisted Susan. "No, Susie. I would rather have spent the rest of my life in Italy."