The ladies went out after dinner, and I was left to the pains and pleasures of a solitary evening, an almost unprecedented experience in my career. The next day was Sunday: the family drove to early mass, and an hour or two later I made my way to the English church, the sparseness of whose congregation gave it rather a forlorn aspect. The English colony is small, and consists chiefly of invalids attracted by the mildness of the climate, who at the same time are too poor to seek a more fashionable health resort. They did not, as may be imagined, present a very cheerful aspect, but the sight of them filled me with a passing envy. Mothers and daughters, sisters, friends; every one came in in groups or pairs, with the exception of myself; I, the most friendless and forlorn of all these exiles. The chaplain and his wife called on me after I had sent in my name for a sitting, but there was never much intimacy between us. In the evening of this, my first Sunday away from home, the Marchesa again "received," and once more I sat bewildered amid the flood of unintelligible chatter, or exchanged occasional remarks with Bianca, who appeared to have abandoned her suspicions of me, and had taken up her place at my side. CHAPTER V. MAKING FRIENDS. I bought a dictionary and a grammar, and worked hard in my moments of leisure. My daily life, moreover, might be described as an almost unbroken Italian lesson, and it was not long before I began to understand what was said around me, and to express myself more or less haltingly in the language of my land of exile. A means of communication being thus opened up between myself and the Marchesina Annunziata, that open-hearted person began to take me into her confidence, and to pour out for my benefit a dozen little facts and circumstances which I might have lived all my life with the voluble, but reserved, Marchesa without ever having learnt. Of Andrea, the absent son, she spoke often. "Molto indipendente!" she said shaking her head, and using the same expression as her young sister-in-law. This reprobate, it seemed, flying in the face of family tradition, had announced from the first his intention of earning his own living; had studied hard and with distinction for a civil engineer, and five years ago, refusing all offers of help, had accepted a post in America. As for Romeo, the elder brother, he also, said his wife, was very clever; had passed his examinations as a barrister. "But, of course," she added, with naive pride, "he would never think of practising." Romeo, indeed, to do him justice, was troubled by no disturbing spirit of radicalism, and carried on the ancestral pursuit of doing nothing with a grace and a persistence which one could not help but admire.