The warm, yellow light from the drawing-room poured out through the open windows on to the terrace, and away beyond the lawns, the flower beds, and the great masses of beech, elm, and oak lay swallowed up in the dusky shadows. The wind rustled the dry leaves from the trees, and made the great boughs shiver with complaining sighs, as though they dreaded the coming of winter, while there was a salt feeling in the air, coming from the distant sea, and, at intervals, the dull, muffled roar of the surf, beating on the lonely coast.
"This is not like Italy," said Alizon to her husband, as they stood arm in arm, peering into the shadows, "and yet there is a kind of similarity. This is the terrace of Villa Tagni, beyond the trees are the distant mountains and that strip of luminous ground is the lake."
"I'm afraid I haven't your imagination, my dear," he answered comically, "or, perhaps, I know the place too well, but I've got a strong feeling that I'm not in Italy, but in England, and, moreover, that I am at home."
"It's a very pleasant feeling."
"Yes! I think even the most inveterate Bohemian, Eustace, for instance, must experience a home-sickness sometimes."
"Has your cousin any home?"
"Oh, yes! At least, he owns a kind of tumble-down old ruin about four miles from here. It overlooks the sea, and is a most dismal place. Eustace visits it about once in a blue moon, but I don't think he likes it. It's a haunted place, if you like."
"Haunted by what?"
"Oh, I don't know. There's some sort of a ghost, who makes himself objectionable--by-the-way, I'm not sure that it isn't a lady ghost, with a rustling of silken skirts. But then ghosts have no sex."
"You seem to be well up in the subject," said his wife, a little drily, as they re-entered the house.