"We are beyond civilization in Muro--we are in the province of Basilicata.

But there are little towns on the way, and you must stop to rest the horses and to eat something.

It will be almost dark when you get home." "Home!" repeated Veronica, thoughtfully.
A confused vision rose in her mind, of an imaginary room, looking down from a height upon a town below--a room in which she would live altogether, with her books and her favourite objects and the companionship of her favourite ideas and plans, all of which were to be realized and executed in the course of time.

She fancied herself gazing down from the wide window upon what was almost all hers, upon the dwellings of people who lived upon her land, who pastured her flocks and drove her cattle, living, moving, and having being as integral animate parts of her great inheritance; children of men and women whose fathers' fathers had laboured in old days that she might have and enjoy the fruits of so much toil, who had given much and from whom had often been taken even that which they had not been bound fairly to give; who had received nothing in return for generations of blood and bone worn out, dried up, and consumed to dust in the service of the great house of Serra.

They had a right to her, as she had a right to the lands on which they lived.