Our drive to-day has been a scamper through Paradise. The road we took wound through orange groves, the sea lay glittering below us, mountains towering above, each hill-top crested with a ruin which had crumbled to decay when the world was young. My Goddess said that she had never known how much truer than history mythology was until this magic morning. Why, we saw the stones that Polyphemus threw after Ulysses, and the scene of Acis' love, and always before us, beckoning us on, was the white, hovering cone of Etna.
At last we struck the little station of Giardini on the coast, the nearest to Taormina, which lies some hundreds of feet above on a high shoulder of the mountains. An exquisite road, engineered in gradual curves, winds upwards along the mountain breast, and as usual the Napier took it at an easy ten miles an hour, and could have done it faster if I had let her. The view grew fairer and fairer as we mounted, and the coast line disclosed itself to north and south. In some three miles we were at the gate of the town. Taormina is practically a long, straight street, at one end the Timeo, at the other the San Domenico. It is simply a Sicilian village, with its Norman fountain and its crumbling palaces, but with a history that goes back to Greece in its prime. Above rises on a splendid height the old Castello; further inland, and higher still, is the wild village of Mola peeping over the edge of a precipice that overhangs the valley. Twenty miles away floats the stately cone of Etna. It is a place of entrancing beauty, and the gem of it all is the ancient Greek theatre. I suppose that nowhere in the world have nature and the noblest art that ever adorned the earth combined in a more perfect picture.
The resting-place chosen by Miss Randolph is not out of that picture, but a part of it. For five hundred years it was a monastery. How well those good old monks knew how to do themselves! They laid out a fairy garden on a gracious headland above the sea, overlooking a panorama the most beautiful in Sicily. They planted it thick with orange and lemon trees and flowers as sweet as bloomed in Eden. Now the monks are banished, but the garden remains, and their old home (with its lovely cloisters, its long, dim corridors panelled with painted saints, its tiled rooms and deep-set windows) opens hospitable doors to strangers.
Aunt Mary is delighted with the San Domenico, because a "real live prince" is her landlord. Even the Goddess says that it makes her feel more than ever that she is living in a fairy story. Now, if only the fairy godmother will come along to-morrow, and waving her wand over Brown, transform him into a worthier hero of that story, and soften the heart of the Princess! Do you think it will be so? In any event, it has done me good to write you this. If all goes well I'll wire. I don't think there's much sleep for me to-night. As soon as there's a chance that the mater can have arrived I shall go down to Santa Margherita, Sir Evelyn Haines' place, and have it out with her.
Your somewhat distracted but faithful friend,
Jack.
MISS SYBIL BARROW TO HER SCHOOL FRIEND, MISS MINNIE HOBSON, OF EDGBASTON, BIRMINGHAM
Santa Margherita,
Taormina, Sicily,
January 28.
My darling Min,-