In front rose the tower-topped hill of Monte Giove, marking the site of Corioli; and just as they turned towards Nemi the Appian Way ran across their path.

Overhead, a marvellous sky with scudding veils of white cloud.
The blur and blight of the scirocco had vanished without rain, under a change of wind.

An all-blessing, all-penetrating sun poured upon the stirring earth.

Everywhere fragments and ruins--ghosts of the great past--yet engulfed, as it were, and engarlanded by the active and fertile present.
And now they were to follow the high ridge above the deep-sunk lake, toward Nemi on its farther side--Nemi with its Orsini tower, grim and tall, rising on its fortress rock, high over the lake and what was once the thick grove or 'Nemus' of the Goddess, mantling the proud white of her inviolate temple.
'Look!'-- said Eleanor, touching Lucy's hand.

'There's the niched wall--and the platform of the temple.' And Lucy, bending eager brows, saw across the lake a line of great recesses, overgrown and shadowy against the steep slopes or cliffs of the crater, and in front of them a flat space, with one farm-shed upon it.
In the crater-wall, just behind and above the temple-site, was a black vertical cleft.