How far, far she was from Uncle Ben, and that shingled house in Vermont! It was near midsummer, and all the English and Americans had fled from this Southern Italy.

Italy was at home, and at ease in her own house, living her own rich immemorial life, knowing and thinking nothing of the foreigner.

Nor indeed on those uplands and in those woods had she ever thought of him; though below in the valley ran the old coach road from Florence to Rome, on which Goethe and Winckelmann had journeyed to the Eternal City.

Lucy felt as though, but yesterday a tourist and stranger, she had now crept like a child into the family circle.

Nay, she had raised a corner of Italy's mantle, and drawn close to the warm breast of one of the great mother-lands of the world.
Ah! but feeling sweeps fast and far, do what we will.