"How can I tell; I was never there; but--I've known people capable of it." She thought of the woman of substance and of Arthur's eldest aunt. "Where are all the people?" she asked, becoming aware that the paradise was tenanted solely by a Swiss porter with a bristling moustache standing at the door of the plain, square villa. Empty garden-seats, cane lounges, and a pile of trunks by a side door bore witness to human occupation, though no soul stirred. "They are happy, Madame; they breakfast. I am without fear as without reproach." He laid a cluster of tea-roses in her hand, and she turned with a smile of thanks and a little sigh of content, to perceive that the view seawards to the west was blocked by a sudden rise of the ridge, round which they had just travelled, the villa and garden sitting down upon the hollow back in a sort of saddle. On the crest of this rise, as if emerging from the pine-woods clothing the steep flank, gleamed the white walls and little bell-gable of a convent, surrounded by cypress and eucalyptus, all in shadow and etched sharply upon that marvellous sky, that before nightfall would be gold, like an early Italian background, or lemon, or one chrysolite, or rose-crimson mingled with orange and green. This gave the last consecrating touch. Thence the Angelus would float down over vineyard and olive-garden, at morning, noon, and evening, and break in soft music across the ravine and over the hill to the hidden town, all the towers of which would take it up in rich confused melody, repeated and heard far out at sea. "But no," she heard; "the convent is now subject to the closure. The fraternity is dispersed. The house is private property." The subject appeared distasteful to her guide. She turned and went into the cool, fresh house, finding the shadow and coolness of the broad, stencilled corridors welcome, and forgetting the ice and fog and shivering of yesterday, and the picture of the thin, starved boy, blue and shuddering on the bleak station, as if they had never been.