The road was deep in thick white dust.

The fig-trees and vines above the growing crops were almost at a full leafiness; scarlet poppies grew thick among the corn; and at the dusty edges of the road, wild roses of a colour singularly vivid and deep, the blue flowers of love-in-a-mist, and some spikes of wine-coloured gladiolus struck strangely on a northern eye.
Then as the road turned back again--behold! a great valley, opening out westward, beyond Orvieto,--the valley of the Paglia; a valley with wooded hills on either side, of a bluish-green colour, chequered with hill-towns and slim campaniles and winding roads; and binding it all in one, the loops and reaches of a full brown river.

Heat everywhere!--on the blinding walls of the buildings, on the young green of the vineyards, on the yellowing corn, on the beautiful ragged children running barefoot and bareheaded beside the carriage, on the peasants working among the vines, on the drooping heads of the horses, on the brick-red face of the driver.
'If Madame had only stayed at Orvieto!' murmured Marie the maid, looking back at the city and then at her mistress.
Eleanor smiled faintly and tapped the girl's hand.
'_Rassure-toi_, Marie! Remember how soon we made ourselves comfortable at the villa.' Marie shook her much be-curled head.

Because it had taken them three months to make the Marinata villa decently habitable, was that any reason for tempting the wilderness again?
Lucy, too, had her misgivings.

Nominally she was travelling, she supposed, under Eleanor Burgoyne's chaperonage.