“But two nights ago, signorina,” she said, “I looked up and saw Anna by my bedside; she had fulfilled her promise and came back for me.”
Poor Giulia! I only saw her once again, and that was on the morrow, when she was carried past our windows on the way to the Campo Santo. According to the custom of those days (I do not know if it still continues), she lay with her face exposed on a bier of magnificent crimson velvet, embroidered with gold, attended by a long procession of priests and mourners for the dead. Her beautiful long hair crowned with fresh roses, her gala dress thrown loosely over her, to be removed when the funeral reached the cemetery, and the fair young creature to be thrown headlong into one of those noisome holes which were opened daily for the interment of the dead.
RIDING PARTIES AT NIGHT
With the exception of two attacks of illness which befell me and my sister, and which were productive of a good result in the friendship we formed with the chief physician of the place, our summer at Naples was most enjoyable. As usual, we had our cavalcades, in which we were always joined by the two Boddington sisters and a compatriot of ours, Hugh Cholmondeley, afterwards Lord Delamere; so that with my two brothers, my sister and myself we formed no insignificant troop of horses. But summer was at its height, and our rides were nocturnal. The horses were ordered at 10 P.M., and we rode till one and two in the morning, for, as I heard a passer-by once say under my window:—
“A Napoli non e mai notte.”
How beautiful were those moonlight rides along the coast towards Posillippo, with the Mediterranean glittering and sparkling, and occasionally dotted by fishing-boats, with their flickering lights, while Vesuvius at intervals threw up volleys of flame and columns of smoke.
What a happy band we were!—alas! there are but two survivors! What delightful excursions we had (the pleasure enhanced by the presence of our respective parents) to Pompeii, to Sorrento and Amalfi and Paestum, and what delicious evenings we spent in the little garden of Villa Craven which overhung the sea! What a trip to the island of Ischia, where the Boddingtons and I danced tarantellas on the terrace of the pretty inn under the tuition of a dark-eyed young Ischiate. How enchanting was the scenery of that sweet little island, the pleasure only marred to our friends’ English maid by the fact that we had to cross the sea to get there.
Harvey (for that was her name), the hysterical friend of Lucca days, expostulated with her mistress on the inconvenience of coming in an open boat—
“Lord and Lady Sydney, ma’m,” she said, “preferred coming by land, and found it much more comfortable.”
Poor Harvey! she was one of those people who remain faithful to their first idea. It was in vain her young ladies explained to her that it was very difficult, they might say impossible, to reach an island by land! Harvey maintained stoutly that Lord and Lady Sydney had achieved this feat, for she had it from the best authority, that of the lady’s maid; and in that belief Harvey went down to her grave.