They had made the journey back to Rome, partly by _vetturino_, driving from Orvieto to Bolsena and Viterbo, and spending a night on the way at a place of remote and enchanting beauty which had left a deep mark on Eleanor's imagination.

They owed the experience to their Italian friends, acquaintances of the great proprietor whose agent gave the whole party hospitality for the night; and as they jogged on through this June heat she recalled with bitter longing the bright November day, the changing leaves, the upland air, and Manisty's delight in the strange unfamiliar country, in the vast oak woods above the Paglia, and the marvellous church at Monte Fiascone.
But it was not the agent's house, the scene of their former stay, to which she was now guiding Lucy.

When she and Manisty, hurrying out for an early walk before the carriage started, had explored a corner of the dense oak woods below the _palazzo_ on the hill, they had come across a deserted convent, with a contadino's family in one corner of it, and a ruinous chapel with a couple of dim frescoes attributed to Pinturicchio.
How well she remembered Manisty's rage over the spoliation of the convent and the ruin of the chapel! He had gone stalking over the deserted place, raving against 'those brigands from Savoy,' and calculating how much it would cost to buy back the place from the rascally Municipio of Orvieto, to whom it now belonged, and return it to its former Carmelite owners.
Meanwhile Eleanor had gossiped with the _massaja_, or farmer's wife, and had found out that there were a few habitable rooms in the convent still, roughly furnished, and that in summer, people of a humble sort came there sometimes from Orvieto for coolness and change--the plateau being 3,000 feet above the sea.

Eleanor had inquired if English people ever came.
'_Inglesi! no!--mai Inglesi_,' said the woman in astonishment.
The family were, however, in some sort of connection with an hotel proprietor at Orvieto, through whom they got their lodgers.

Eleanor had taken down the name and all particulars in a fit of enthusiasm for the beauty and loneliness of the place.