"Where you will. I leave myself entirely in your hands," he
said.

So he sat by the rustic table, on a rustic bench, under the
willow, sipped his coffee, smoked his cigarette, and gazed in
contemplation at the view.

Of its kind, it was rather a striking view.

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