The whole country about Castel Casteggio was absolutely primeval, or at any rate as primeval as Scotch gardeners and French landscape artists could make it.

The lake itself lay like a sparkling gem from nature's workshop--except that they had raised the level of it ten feet, stone-banked the sides, cleared out the brush, and put a motor road round it.

Beyond that it was pure nature.
Castel Casteggio itself, a beautiful house of white brick with sweeping piazzas and glittering conservatories, standing among great trees with rolling lawns broken with flower-beds as the ground sloped to the lake, was perhaps the most beautiful house of all; at any rate, it was an ideal spot to wear old clothes in, to dine early (at 7.30) and, except for tennis parties, motor-boat parties, lawn teas, and golf, to live absolutely to oneself.
It should be explained that the house was not called Castel Casteggio because the Newberrys were Italian: they were not; nor because they owned estates in Italy: they didn't nor had travelled there: they hadn't.

Indeed, for a time they had thought of giving it a Welsh name, or a Scotch.

But the beautiful country residence of the Asterisk-Thomsons had stood close by in the same primeval country was already called Penny-gw-rydd, and the woodland retreat of the Hyphen-Joneses just across the little lake was called Strathythan-na-Clee, and the charming chalet of the Wilson-Smiths was called Yodel-Dudel; so it seemed fairer to select an Italian name.
* * * * * "By Jove! Miss Furlong, how awfully good of you to come down!" The little suburban train--two cars only, both first class, for the train went nowhere except out into the primeval wilderness--had drawn up at the diminutive roadside station.