CHAPTER III.

RICCABOCCA could not confine himself to the precincts within the walls to
which he condemned Violante. Resuming his spectacles, and wrapped in his
cloak, he occasionally sallied forth upon a kind of outwatch or
reconnoitring expedition,--restricting himself, however, to the immediate
neighbourhood, and never going quite out of sight of his house. His
favourite walk was to the summit of a hillock overgrown with stunted
bush-wood. Here he would sit himself musingly, often till the hoofs of
Randal's horse rang on the winding road, as the sun set, over fading
herbage, red and vaporous, in autumnal skies. Just below the hillock,
and not two hundred yards from his own house, was the only other
habitation in view,--a charming, thoroughly English cottage, though
somewhat imitated from the Swiss, with gable ends, thatched roof, and
pretty, projecting casements, opening through creepers and climbing
roses. From his height he commanded the gardens of this cottage, and his
eye of artist was pleased, from the first sight, with the beauty which
some exquisite taste had given to the ground. Even in that cheerless
season of the year, the garden wore a summer smile; the evergreens were
so bright and various, and the few flow ers still left so hardy and so
healthful. Facing the south, a colonnade, or covered gallery, of rustic
woodwork had been formed, and creeping plants, lately set, were already
beginning to clothe its columns. Opposite to this colonnade there was a
fountain which reminded Riccabocca of his own at the deserted Casino. It
was indeed singularly like it; the same circular shape, the same girdle
of flowers around it. But the jet from it varied every day, fantastic
and multiform, like the sports of a Naiad,--sometimes shooting up like a