"Is one where papa and mamma resided when I was very young."
"You are not very old yet," was the laughing rejoinder.
"It is on the Arno. But how often have I wished for power to depict the lovely Lake of Como, as we could see it by night from the windows of our villa—the shore all dark, or dotted only by the lights in many a palace and dwelling, the snowy summits of the Splugen Alps rising against the starlit sky, and the oars of the gondoliers flashing as their little vessels shot across the sheet of silent water."
"You are quite an enthusiast!" said the officer, smiling; and at that moment, with her sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks, the usually pale girl looked radiantly beautiful; but her dark eyes drooped, and she replied—
"I did so love Como and our pleasant picnics to Bellaggio and other places, where the orange-trees overhang the water so closely that the golden fruit dipped in it from time to time, when the laden branches were stirred by the passing wind."
"Now you will surely agree with me, that when contrasted with such scenery as you describe, our Cornish rock-pillars and mines are but stupid affairs?"
"Ah, no—I cannot assent to that; there is Bottalick Mine, for example, where the gloomy precipices of slate are hewn into such fantastic shapes, and the great engine, perched on the ledge of a terrible cliff, enables the miner to work below the sea. Oh, think of that, to be quarrying for copper and tin in damp grottoes and cells four hundred and eighty feet below the ocean, and to hear its waves—the same waves that dash against Cape Cornwall—rolling the mighty boulders in thunder on the bluffs overhead!"
"Have you been down and heard all that?"
"No," replied Sybil, blushing for her own energy and enthusiasm.
"How then——"