The sun shone for a few minutes after its rising through a rift in the clouds, but soon went in again; the rain still poured down, and the distance was hidden in mist that clung to the hillsides and filled each ravine and cranny in the rocks. They were near Orvieto when the car broke down; Vincenzo was out on the road at once, but his master sat quite still. He could not endure the thought of any delay.
“What is it? Will it take long?” He had forced himself to wait a minute before he asked the question, but still his lips felt stiff, and all the colour had gone out of them.
The man reassured him. “It is nothing.”
Jean went to help him, and soon they were able to go on again.
They came presently to the fen lands—the Campagna that so greatly needs the magic and glamour of the Roman sunshine, the vault of the blue sky above, and the sound of larks singing to adorn it. It seemed a desolate and dreary waste, wind-swept, and shivering under the lash of the rain on such a morning as this, and the car was a very small thing moving in that apparently illimitable plain along a road that might be endless. Jean saw a herd of the wild, black buffaloes standing in a pool at the foot of a broken arch of the Claudian aqueduct, and now and again he caught a glimpse of fragments of masonry, or a ruined tower, ancient stronghold of one or other of the robber barons who preyed on Rome-ward pilgrims in the age of faith and rapine.
They reached Albano soon after eleven o’clock, and Jean left his man in the car while he went in to the Ristorante of the Albergo della Posta. He ordered a cup of coffee, and sat down at one of the little marble tables near the door to drink it. There was no one else in the place at the moment.
“Can you tell me the way to the Villino Bella Vista?”
The waiter looked at him curiously. “It is down in the olive woods and quite near the lake, and you must go to it by a lane from the Galleria di Sopra, the upper road to Castel Gandolfo.” After a momentary hesitation he added, “Scusi! But are you thinking of taking it, signore?”
Jean started. It had not occurred to him that the house might be empty. “I don’t know,” he answered cautiously. “Has it been to let long?”
“Oh, yes,” the man said. “The Princess Tor di Rocca spent her last years there, alone, and after her death the agent in Rome found tenants. But lately no one has come to it, even to see.” He lowered his voice. “The place has a bad name hereabouts. The contadini—rough, ignorant folk, signore—say she still walks in the garden at moonrise, waiting for the husband and son who never came; and the women who go to wash their linen in the lake will not come back that way at night for fear of seeing her dead eyes peering at them through the bars of the gate.”