I find the old one-eyed _maestro_, and am met with cordial welcome by the mother of the pretty Enrica. The count has gone to the marshes of Ancona. Lame Pietro still shuffles around the boards at the Leprè, and the flower sellers at the corner bind me a more brilliant bouquet than ever for a new beauty at Rome. As we ramble under the broken arches of the great aqueduct stretching toward Frascati, I tell Carry the story of my trip in the Appenines, and we search for the pretty Carlotta. But she is married, they tell us, to a Neapolitan guardsman. In the spring twilight we wander upon those heights which lie between Frascati and Albano, and looking westward, see that glorious view of the Campagna, which can never be forgotten. But beyond the Campagna, and beyond the huge hulk of St. Peter’s, heaving into the sky from the middle waste, we see, or fancy we see, a glimpse of the sea, which stretches out and on to the land we love, better than Rome. And in fancy we build up that home, which shall belong to us on the return—a home that has slumbered long in the future, and which, now that the future has come, lies fairly before me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] HOME YEARS seem to have passed. They have mellowed life into ripeness. The start, and change, and hot ambition of youth seem to have gone by. A calm and joyful quietude has succeeded. That future which still lies before me seems like a roseate twilight, sinking into a peaceful and silent night. My home is a cottage, near that where Isabel once lived. The same valley is around me; the same brook rustles and loiters under the gnarled roots of the overhanging trees. The cottage is no mock cottage, but a substantial, wide-spreading cottage, with clustering gables and ample shade, such a cottage as they build upon the slopes of Devon. Vines clamber over it, and the stones show mossy through the interlacing climbers. There are low porches, with cozy armchairs, and generous oriels, fragrant with mignonette, and the blue blossoming violets. The chimney stacks rise high and show clear against the heavy pine trees, that ward off the blasts of winter. The dovecote is a habited dovecote, and the purple-necked pigeons swoop around the roofs in great companies. The hawthorn is budding into its June fragrance along all the lines of fence, and the paths are trim and clean. The shrubs—our neglected azaleas and rhododendrons chiefest among them—stand in picturesque groups upon the close-shaven lawn.