Gravedona... with imposing square towers and bastions rising straight up out of the water. ful loggia hanging over the lake. It was built in the sixteenth century by Cardinal Gallio, and must have been a noble residence for a prince of the church. The hall, which runs straight through the house, from the entrance to the loggia, with rooms opening out of it on both sides, is splendid. It all looked very bare and uncomfortable to-day, though it is inhabited. The present owner comes there for several months of the year, but he is a bachelor and has evidently very simple tastes. We stood some time in the loggia looking down on the lake through the arches. We were so high that the passing boats looked like toy steamers, and no noise of life got up to us. The atmosphere was beautifully clear and the sun dazzling. It was a relief to get back into the great dark hall. What a magnificent frame it must have been for the pomp and state with which the priceless jewels. They were, too, munificent patrons of the arts, and had musicians, painters, and poets attached to their households. When a daughter of one of the great houses married, or a son was made an ambassador, they travelled with suites and escorts like sovereigns. Standing in the hall of Gravedona we could quite well picture to ourselves the brilliant motley crowd in the anteroomprelates of every description, from the courtly purple-robed monsignor to the humble priest in his black soutane; the secretaries and chaplains of his Eminence; fair women, too, who had something to ask for sons and husbands and lovers. It was curious how all sorts of visions of days long since passed were conjured up by the great height and space and desolation of the place. We went upstairs, but there was nothing interesting there a long corridor with rooms on each side, like a monastery. There were some carved chests and chairs in the corridor, which, the servant told us, had belonged to the cardinal, but I think that statement was prompted by a kindly wish to please the "forestieri." There is little left of the garden-some fine cypress trees and quiet, shady corners where one could sit and dream of the past. I wonder why one always goes back to the past in Italy more than anywhere else. I think there must be something in the atmosphere that takes one out of modern life. The mountains and the lakes and the ruins have a glamour of romance and mystery which appeals at once to the imagination. One feels more in sympathy with the people who lived and loved and fought five hundred years ago than with the young Italy of to-day, though she has fought and struggled bravely enough to take her place among the nations. The great pile looked splendid as we left it behind us, rising à pic out of the water, the square gray towers outlined on the bright blue sky, frowning down on the lake-a perpetual menace to an imaginary foe. The drive back toward the sunset was enchanting. I think I like Lake Como best in the evening half-light. Such a beautiful pink-purple haze lingers over everything when the lights are faded out of the sky. Everything is still and peaceful and the busy world (if an Italian world ever is busy) is resting. We had a beautiful moon for our last evening, and quite a ripple on the lake. We could really hear a little swash of waves on the shore and the fishermen's bells sounded very near. We were very sorry to say good-by to our gracious hostess and leave this charming house, with its loggias and gardens and its divine views morning and evening over the lake. But everything must finish. We must put the Alps between us and this place of "peace and poetry," to quote the old gardener of beautiful Balbianello. September, 1910. WITCHING HILL STORIES BY E. W. HORNUNG ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. C. YOHN III. A VICIOUS CIRCLE HE Berridges of Berylstow- view. She affected flowing fabrics of pecula house near my office in the iar shades, and she had still more peculiar Witching Hill Road-were ideas of furnishing. On Saturday afterperhaps the very worthiest noons she would drag poor Guy into all the family on the whole Estate. second-hand furniture shops in the neighOld Mr. Berridge, by a life- borhood-not even to save money, as Mrs. time of faithful service, had risen to a fine Mrs. Berridge complained to her more inposition in one of the oldest and most sub- timate friends-but just to be peculiar. It stantial assurance societies in the City of seemed like a judgment when Guy fell so ill London. Mrs. Berridge, herself a woman with influenza, obviously contracted in one of energetic character, devoted every min- of those highly peculiar shops, that he had to ute that she could spare from household mortgage his summer holiday by going away duties, punctiliously fulfilled, to the glori- for a complete change early in the new year. fication of the local vicar and the denun- He went to country cousins of the suburciation of modern ideas. There was a ban Hemmings; his own Miss Hemming daughter, whose name of Beryl had in- went with him, and it was on their return spired that of the house; she was her moth- that a difference was first noticed in the er's miniature and echo, and had no desire young couple. They no longer looked rato ride a bicycle or do anything else that diant together, much less when apart. The Mrs. Berridge had not done before her. good young accountant would pass my winAn only son, Guy, completed the partie dow with a quite tragic face. And one morncarrée, and already made an admirable ac- ing, when we met outside, he told me that countant under his father's eagle eye. He he had not slept a wink. was about thirty years of age, had a mild face but a fierce mustache, was engaged to be married, and already picking up books and pictures for the new home. As a bookman Guy Berridge stood alone. "There's nothing like them for furnishing a house," said he; "and nowadays they're so cheap. There's that new series of Victorian Classics-one-and-tenpence - halfpenny! And those Eighteenth Century Masterpieces-I don't know when I shall get time to read them, but they're worth the money for the binding alone-especially with everything peculiar taken out!" Peculiar was a family epithet of the widest possible significance. It was peculiar of Guy, in the eyes of the other three, to be in such a hurry to leave their comfortable home for one of his own on a necessarily much smaller scale. Miss Hemming, the future Mrs. Guy, was by no means deficient in peculiarity from his people's point of That evening I went to smoke a pipe with Uvo Delavoye, who happened to have brought me into these people's ken. And we were actually talking about Guy Berridge and his affairs when the maid showed him up into Uvo's room. I never saw a man look quite so wretched. The mild face seemed to cower behind the truculent mustache; the eyes, bright and bloodshot, winced when one met them. I got up to go, feeling instinctively that he had come to confide in Uvo. But Berridge read me as quickly as I read him. "Don't you go on my account," said he gloomily. "I've nothing to tell Delavoye that I can't tell you, especially after giving myself away to you once already to-day. I daresay three heads will be better than two, and I know I can trust you both.” "Is anything wrong?" asked Uvo, when preliminary solicitations had reminded me that his visitor neither smoked nor drank. And the accountant shook his downcast away?" head. "I only meant, my dear chap, if you'd had some disagreement "We've never had the least little word!" "Has she changed?" asked Uvo Dela voye. "Not that I know of," replied Berridge; but he looked up as though it were a new idea, and there was more life in his voice. "She'd tell you," said Uvo, “if I know her." "Do people tell each other?" eagerly inquired our friend. "They certainly ought, and I think Miss Hemming would." "Ah! it's easy enough for them!" cried the miserable young man. "Women are not liars and traitors because they happen to change their minds. Nobody thinks the worse of them for that; it's their privilege, isn't it? They can break off as many engagements as they like; but if I did such a thing I should never hold up my head again!" He buried his hot face in his hands, and Delavoye looked at me for the first time. It was a sympathetic look enough; and yet there was something in it, a lift of the eyebrow, a light in the eye, that reminded me of the one point on which we always differed. "Better hide your head than spoil her life," said he briskly. "But how long have you felt like doing either? I used to look on you as an ideal pair." "So we were," said poor Berridge readily. "It's most peculiar!" I saw a twitch at the corners of Uvo's mouth; but he was not the man for sly glances over a bowed head. "How long have you been engaged?" he asked. "Ever since last September." "You were here then. if I remember?" VOL. LI.-42 "Everything." "Then," said I, "it looks to me like the mere mental effect of influenza, and nothing else!" But that was not the sense of the glance I could not help shooting at Delavoye. And my explanation was no comfort to Guy Berridge; he had thought of it before; but then he had never felt better than the last few days in the country, yet never had he been in such despair. "I can't go through with it," he groaned in abject unreserve. "It's making my life a hell-a living lie! I don't know how to bear it-from one meeting to the next-I dread them so! Yet I've always a sort of hope that next time everything will suddenly become as it was before Christmas. Talk of forlorn hopes! Each time's worse than the last. I've come straight from her now. I don't know what you must think of me! It's not ten minutes since we said good-night." The big mustache trembled. "I felt a Judas," he whispered; "an absolute Judas!". "I believe it's all nerves," said Delavoye, but with so little conviction that I loudly echoed the belief. "But I don't go in for nerves," protested Berridge; "none of us do, in our family. We don't believe in them. We think they're a modern excuse for anything you like to do or say; that's what we think about nerves. I'm not going to start them just to make myself out better than I am. It's my heart that's rotten, not my nerves." "I admire your attitude," said Delavoye, "but I don't agree with you. It'll all come back to you in the end-everything you think you've lost-and then you'll feel as though you'd awakened from a bad dream." "But sometimes I do wake up, as it is!" cried Berridge, catching at the idea."Near |