Not until then did Giovanni Selva tell his companions that Benedetto was no longer in the villa, that he had begged to be carried to his little old room in the gardener's house.

The carriage moved forward a few yards, and the four friends alighted before a flight of white marble steps, between two groups of palms.

It was still raining, but not heavily, and no one thought about it, neither the populace crowding round the gate, nor a group of people who were watching the new arrivals, from the avenue bordered by orange trees, which ran parallel with the inclosing wall down to the gardener's little house.

Some one left the group.

It was di Leyni, who mounted the marble steps behind Selva, and, stopping him under the arch of the Pompeian vestibule, spoke to him in a low tone, without so much as a glance at the magnificent scene which was spread out before them between the two groups of palms: the river of begonias, tumbling down the slope of the Aventine, between two banks of _musae_; the black and stormy sky, striped with white down above the battlements of Porta San Paolo, above the pyramid of Caio Cestio, and above the little grove of cypress which springs from the heart of Shelley.
* * * * * Selva entered the vestibule, and reappeared a moment later with his wife.