Only a month before, at the end of March, at Brussels, death had claimed the old governess, with whom she had lived.

Neither Giovanni Selva nor his wife had been able to come to Noemi at this great crisis, for Selva was seriously ill at the time.

Jeanne Dessalle, who had become much attached to Noemi, persuaded her brother to undertake the journey to Belgium, a country with which he was hitherto unacquainted, and then offered to take the Selvas' place in Brussels.

It thus happened that towards the end of April Noemi was with the Dessalles at Bruges.

They occupied a small villa on the shore of the little mirror of water called "Lac d'Amour." Carlino had fallen in love with Bruges and especially with the Lac d'Amour, the name of which he contemplated giving to the novel he dreamed of writing.