In the immediate foreground—at his feet, indeed—there was the river, the narrow Aco, peacock-green, a dark file of poplars on either bank, rushing pell-mell away from the quiet waters of the lake. Then, just across the river, at his left, stretched the smooth lawns of the park of Ventirose, with glimpses of the many-pinnacled castle through the trees; and, beyond, undulating country, flourishing, friendly, a perspective of vineyards, cornfields, groves, and gardens, pointed by numberless white villas. At his right loomed the gaunt mass of the Gnisi, with its black forests, its bare crags, its foaming ascade, and the crenelated range of the Cornobastone; and finally, climax and cynosure, at the valley's end, Monte Sfiorito, its three snow-covered summits almost insubstantial-seeming, floating forms of luminous pink vapour, in the evening sunshine, against the intense blue of the sky.
A familiar verse had come into Peter's mind, and kept running there obstinately.
“Really,” he said to himself, “feature for feature, down to the very 'cataract leaping in glory,' the scene might have been got up, apres coup, to illustrate it.” And he began to repeat the beautiful hackneyed words, under his breath....
But about midway of the third line he was interrupted.
II
“It's not altogether a bad sort of view—is it?” some one said, in English.
The voice was a woman's. It was clear and smooth; it was crisp-cut, distinguished.
Peter glanced about him.
On the opposite bank of the Aco, in the grounds of Ventirose, five or six yards away, a lady was standing, looking at him, smiling.