“You really mustn’t set me riddles, Mrs. Foss.”
“For years we have seen it every time we drive to the Cascine, and seen it with a certain curiosity–always deserted, always with closed blinds, in its way the most beautiful house in Florence.”
“The most–I can’t think what house you mean.”
“Of course not, with your tastes. But imagine some nice, rich Americans, without either art education or the smallest affectation of such a thing, and ask yourself what they would like. Why, a big, square, clean-looking, new-looking, wealthy-looking house, of course, set in a nice garden, with, at the end of the garden, a nice stable. I was thankful to find the place had been kept up.”
“But is there–on the Lungarno, did you say?”
“It is that house we have called the Haughty Hermitage, Gerald,” Brenda helped him.
“Oh, that! But surely one doesn’t live in a house like that!”
“Your excellent reason?” inquired Leslie.
“I don’t know,”–he hesitated,–“but surely one doesn’t live in a house like that!”
They had to laugh at the expression brought into his face by his sense of a mysterious incongruity.