"Then you shall see a fine sit-oo-ation. First we shall go in the _barca_," she cried, jumping into a light boat, which was moored to the marble steps of the artificial lake. She made Will row, while she sat in the stern with the Admiral, pointing out the exquisite little temples and marble nymphs and couches and bridges with which the lake, which was really more like a little river running between and round a number of little islands full of the rarest and most picturesque exotics, was studded. Will rowed with alacrity. The Admiral was clearly enjoying himself, and anything that gave him the least gratification was the sincerest pleasure to Will: he did not note that he was being left out of the conversation. Presently Donna Rusidda demanded to be landed in a beautiful _rosetum_, in which the roses were trained round a framework into a huge green crown, a model of that worn by Her Majesty's mother, the great Empress Maria Theresa. There were quite a number of hoops to it, and the rose flowers made the gems; while the leaves changing with the autumn--the season in which it was intended to be seen--gave a golden colour to the ribs. In the centre of it, underneath the boss which contained the great gem of the real crown, was a vase of immense value--ancient Grecian of the best period--lying on the ground, which looked as if it had fallen but recently from the slender marble "stele" of a satyr with four faces, brought from the excavations at Pompeji. "Oh, Signor W-Will, the wind has blow over Her Majesty's favourite vase!" Naturally, Will sprang forward to replace it; and, balancing it with great care, started to rejoin them where they were standing on a beautiful tesselated pavement, adorned with the signs of the Zodiac. All of a sudden, from dozens of little jets, a great shower of water met him full in the face. He dashed back to get out at the other side, only to meet another shower, which, coming into play on him from a greater distance, was more like spray. He tried a third path, and again met the spray; but, grasping that all the paths were similarly commanded, dashed through it and the heavier shower which greeted him nearer, and flew to the pavement where they were standing, looking like a seal. Something in the pavement caught his eye, and, looking more closely, he perceived that each Zodiacal sign had for its centre mosaic a little bronze cube, raised slightly above the rest. Donna Rusidda shrieked with laughter as he put his foot on the whole twelve in succession, starting the shower on each of the corresponding twelve paths of the leafy crown of Austria; and the Admiral, though he would have been sorry for Will if he had reflected, gave the great roar of laughter in which he indulged whenever he was extravagantly tickled. He was a boy all his life, in the intervals of anxiety caused by the blindness of the Government, on whom he depended for ships and supplies to strike at the French, and irritation and depression caused