Vera felt a sudden thrill when Lady Felicia told her that they were to winter at San Marco. She hardly knew whether the thrill was of pleasure or of pain. The place would be full of melancholy thoughts. Giulia's grave would be the one significant point in the landscape; but the long parade, with its shabby date palms and ragged pepper trees, could never again be as dull and grey and heartbreakingly monotonous as it had been a year ago; for now San Marco was peopled with the shadows of things that had once been lovely and dear. Now all that beauty which had once been far away and unknown had been made familiar in the long drives in the big, luxurious carriage drawn by gay and eager horses, whose work seemed joy--and the al fresco luncheons on the summit of romantic hills, with all the glory of the Western Ligura laid out below them like an enchanter's carpet, and the semi-Moorish cities, and Roman ruins of circus and citadel, the white cathedrals--remote among the mountains, yet alive with priests and nuns and picturesque villagers, and the sound of bells and swinging of censers--San Marco no longer meant only that level walk above the sluggish sea. It meant historical Italy. Her feelings about the place had altered utterly after the coming of the Provanas, and her mind was full of her lost friend when she alighted at the door of the Hôtel des Anglais, where Madame Canincio was waiting to receive honoured guests. Inmates who stopped till the very end of the season, and who came again next year, were worthy of highest honour (albeit they paid the minimum second-floor _pension_; and though Canincio had audaciously declared that he lost money by the _arrangement_). Lady Felicia was a distinct asset, were it only for keeping the Cit's wife, Lady Jones, in her place. Vera looked sadly along the spacious corridor, that had been so bright with flowers during the Provana occupation. "Have you nice people on your first floor, Madame Canincio?" she asked. "Alas, no, Mademoiselle. Our noble floor is empty. If we had six third floors and ten fourth floors, we could let every room--but for the first floor there is no one. Rich people do not come to San Marco. They want gambling-tables and pigeon-shooting, or the vulgarity of Nice." "I suppose you have heard nothing of Signor Provana since he left?" "Nothing, Mademoiselle, except that he is in Rome, and one of the greatest men there. And he was so simple and plain in his ways, and always so kind and courteous. He wanted so little for himself, and never once found fault with our chef, who, good as he is, must have been inferior to his own." "I hope your chef did not give him risotto or chopped-up liver, or macaroni three times a week for luncheon," Lady Felicia said, sourly.