Piccino was so tired that he fell asleep before the carriage had left the curving road, but when it reached the city the jolting of the wheels wakened him, and he opened his beautiful drowsy eyes and found them dazzled by the lights. They were not very bright or numerous lights, but they seemed so very dazzling to him that he felt bewildered by them. If Maria had been with him he would have clung to her and asked questions about everything, but, even if he had not been too much a baby and too shy, he could not have asked questions of Greggs, who was sufficiently English to feel his own language quite enough for a sensible footman. If the Italians wished to speak Italian that was their own taste, and they might bear the consequences of not being able to make him understand them. English was enough for Greggs. So Piccino was borne through the amazing streets in silence. The people in the carriage had also become rather silent, having been lulled, as it were, by the long drive through the woods and olive groves. Lady Aileen, in fact, had had time to begin to wonder if her new plan would prove as satisfactory and amusing as she had fancied it might. Mr. Gordon was quietly speculating about it himself; the other man in the carriage was thinking of the Battle of Flowers at Nice, and inventing a new scheme of floral decoration for a friend’s victoria. The only person who was really thinking of Piccino himself was the girl who sat by Lady Aileen. She was a clever girl, and kind, and she was wondering how he would like the change in his life, and if he had begun to feel homesick. The carriage had to go up-hill again before it reached Lady Aileen’s villa. It was a snowy white villa on an eminence, and it had a terraced garden and looked out over the sea. When they drove through the stately gateway Piccino felt his small heart begin to thump, though he did not know why at all. There were shadows of trees and scents of roses and orange blossom and heliotrope. And on the highest terrace the white house stood, with a glow of light in its portico and gleams in its windows. Poor little dirty peasant baby, how could it be otherwise than that all this grandeur and whiteness should alarm him!