This garden was a charming place.

Its south wall was curtained with a dense orange vine, a dozen fig-trees offered you their large-leaved shade, and over the low parapet the soft, grave Tuscan landscape kept you company.

The rooms themselves were as high as chapels and as cool as royal sepulchres.

Silence, peace, and security seemed to abide in the ancient house and make it an ideal refuge for aching hearts.

Mrs.Hudson had a stunted, brown-faced Maddalena, who wore a crimson handkerchief passed over her coarse, black locks and tied under her sharp, pertinacious chin, and a smile which was as brilliant as a prolonged flash of lightning.