“Not where my Campo Santo is. They go to Cadenabbia, Bellagio, Villa D’Este sometimes.”
“I see the fascination. But it looks haunted. You’ve bought it?”
“Yes. The matter was arranged to-day.”
The photograph showed a large, long house, or rather two houses divided by a piazza with slender columns. In the foreground was water. Through the arches of the piazza water was also visible, a cascade falling in the black cleft of a mountain gorge dark with the night of cypresses. To the right of the house, rising from the lake, was a tall old wall overgrown with masses of creeping plants and climbing roses. Over it more cypresses looked, and at the base of it, near the house, were a flight of worn steps disappearing into the lake, and an arched doorway with an elaborately-wrought iron grille. Beneath the photograph was written, “Casa Felice.”
“Casa Felice, h’m!” said Carey, with his eyes on the photograph.
“You think the name inappropriate?”
“Who knows? One can be wretched among sunbeams. One might be gay among cypresses. And Casa Felice belongs to you?”
“From to-day.”
“Old—of course?”
“Yes. There is a romance connected with the house.”