“No. Indeed, only to-day I acquired a Campo Santo with cypress trees, in which I intend to make a home for any dying romance that still lingers within me.” He spoke with a sort of wistful whimsicality. Carey stared hard at him. “A Campo Santo’s a place for the dead.” “Why not for the dying? Don’t they need holy ground as much?” “And where’s this holy ground of yours?” Sir Donald got up from his chair, went over to the bureau, opened a drawer, and took out of it a large photograph rolled round a piece of wood, which he handed to Carey, who swiftly spread it out on his knees. “That is it.” “I say, Sir Donald, d’you mind my asking for a whisky-and-soda?” “I beg your pardon.” He hastily touched a bell and ordered it. Meanwhile Carey examined the photograph. “What do you think of it?” Sir Donald asked. “Well--Italy obviously.” “Yes, and a conventional part of Italy.” “Maggiore?” “No, Como.” “The playground of the honeymoon couple.” “Not where my Campo Santo is. They go to Cadenabbia, Bellagio, Villa D’Este sometimes.” “I see the fascination. But it looks haunted. You’ve bought it?” “Yes. The matter was arranged to-day.” The photograph showed a large, long house, or rather two houses divided by a piazza with slender columns. In the foreground was water. Through the arches of the piazza water was also visible, a cascade falling in the black cleft of a mountain gorge dark with the night of cypresses. To the right of the house, rising from the lake, was a tall old wall overgrown with masses of creeping plants and climbing roses. Over it more cypresses looked, and at the base of it, near the house, were a flight of worn steps disappearing into the lake, and an arched doorway with an elaborately-wrought iron grille. Beneath the photograph was written, “_Casa Felice_.” “Casa Felice, h’m!” said Carey, with his eyes on the photograph. “You think the name inappropriate?” “Who knows? One can be wretched among sunbeams. One might be gay among cypresses. And Casa Felice belongs to you?” “From to-day.” “Old--of course?” “Yes. There is a romance connected with the house.” “What is it?” “Long ago two guilty lovers deserted their respective mates and the brilliant world they had figured in, and fled there together.” “And quarrelled and were generally wretched there for how many months?” “For eight years.” “The devil! Fidelity gone mad!” “It is said that during those years the mistress never left the garden, except to plunge into the lake on moonlight nights and swim through the silver with her lover.” Carey was silent. He did not take his eyes from the photograph, which seemed to fascinate him. When the servant came in with the whisky-and-soda he started. “Not a place to be alone in,” he said. He drank, and stared again at the photograph. “There’s something about the place that holds one even in a photograph,” he added. “One can feel the strange intrigue that made the house a hermitage. It has been a hermitage ever since.”