It was that view which our Chauffeulier urged, but Aunt Kathryn was for going on without a stop, until Sir Ralph said, "It's not patriotic of you to pass by. Palladio built your Capitol at Washington, and all the fine old colonial houses you admire so much in the East." "Dear me, did he?" exclaimed Aunt Kathryn. "Why, I never heard of him." "Moray doesn't mean his words to be taken undiluted," said Mr. Barrymore. "If it hadn't been for Palladio, there would have been no Inigo Jones and no Christopher Wren, therefore if you'd had a Capitol at all, it wouldn't be what it is now. And to understand the colonial architecture of America, you have to go back to Palladio." "Well, here we are at him," sighed Aunt Kathryn. "But I hope we won't have to get _out_?" Mr. Barrymore laughed. "The Middle Ages revisited, _en automobile_! However, I'll do my best as showman in the circumstances." So he drove us into a splendid square, where Palladio was at his grandest with characteristic facades, galleries, and stately colonnades. Then, slowly, through the street of palaces and out into the open country once more--a rich country of grain-fields (looking always as if an unseen hand softly stroked their silver hair) and of hills swelling into a mountainous horizon. There was a bright little flower-bordered canal too, and I've grown fond of canals since the neighbourhood of Milan, finding them as companionable as rivers, if more tame. Indeed, they seem like rivers that have gone to live in town, where they've learned to be a bit stilted and mechanical in manner. The farmhouses, standing but a short distance back from the level of the road, were manorial in a queer way; two or three of them, exquisite old things, their great roofed balconies covered with ivy and blossoming creepers. The women we met were pretty, too--so pretty often that, as Sir Ralph said, it wouldn't have been safe for them to walk out in the feudal ages, as they would promptly have been kidnapped by the nearest seignior. We might have guessed that we were not far out from Venice by the gorgeous Titian hair of the peasant children playing by the wayside, or a copper coil twisted above a girl's dark eyes. "How long a time shall we spend in Padua, Countess?" asked the Chauffeulier as we came within sight of a gateway, some domes and campanili. "Oh, don't let's make up our mind till we get there," replied Aunt Kathryn comfortably. "But we are there," said he. "In another minute the little men of the _dazio_ will be tapping our bags as a doctor taps his patient's lungs."