The walk had taken them longer than they expected, and they had only a short time to stay.

They looked carelessly at the niched wall, and the shed with the strawberry baskets, remarking that there was 'precious little to see, now you'd done it.' Then they walked past Lucy, throwing many curious glances at the solitary English girl with the tea-things before her, the gentlemen raising their hats.

And finally they hurried away, and all sounds of them were soon lost in the quiet of the May evening.
Lucy was left, feeling a little forlorn and disconcerted.

Presently she noticed that all the women working on the Giardino land were going home.
Aristodemo and his companion ran after some of the girls, and their discordant shouts and laughs could be heard in the distance, mingled with the 'Ave Maria' sung by groups of woman and girls who were mounting the zigzag path towards Nemi, their arms linked together.
The evening stillness came flooding into the great hollow like a soft resistless wave.

Every now and then the voices of peasants going home rippled up from unseen paths, then sank again into the earth.