artist, and often he had tried to reproduce the satyr from memory, but always the ugly visage assumed a mocking, sneering aspect which caused him to relinquish his cherished ambition in despair.

But the Villa Godilombra appealed to Armstrong for a different reason. It stood high up on the hill, affording a wonderful view of the village of Settignano and the wide-spreading valley of the Arno. The villa itself, with its overhanging eaves, coigned angles, and narrow windows, set on heavy consoles, was essentially Tuscan, and impressive far out of proportion to its size. It would have seemed too massive but for an arcade at either end, the one connecting the house itself with its chapel, the other leading from the first floor through a spiral stairway in one pier of the arcade to what originally, in the days of the Gamberelli, had been an old fish-pond and herb-garden. In front of the villa a row of antiquated stone vases shared the honors with equally dilapidated stone dogs along a grassy terrace held up by a low wall, while beyond this and the house was the vineyard.

Armstrong had studied the plans of the house and grounds from a distance, because, after his disappointing experience with Michelangelo’s satyr, he had firmly determined to become an architect and to build Italian houses in America. He had walked up and down the long bowling-green behind the villa, carefully noting the number of statues set upon the high retaining wall and figuring the height of the hedges. One day old Giuseppe, the sun-baked gardener who had watched the boy first with suspicion and then with interest, invited him to enter, and his joy had been complete. Giuseppe showed him the fish-pond and the grotto, lying in the shadow of the ancient cypresses, made up of varicolored shells and stones, with shepherds and nymphs occupying niches around a trickling fountain. He led him to the balustrade at the end of the bowling-green, and pointed out the panorama which terminated in the hills beyond the southern bank of the river.

Parallel with the back of the villa was another wall which supported a terrace of cypress and ilex trees. Behind this was the salvatico, without which no self-respecting Italian villa could maintain its dignity, with stone seats beneath the heavy foliage offering a grateful relief from the glare of the sun. And here and there were white statues of classic goddesses, to relieve the loneliness had it existed. An iron gate, let into the wall opposite the main doorway of the villa, led into a small garden, this leading in turn into another grotto, which, with its fountain and statues, formed an extension of the vista. On either side a balustraded flight of steps led up to an artificial height—the Italians’ beloved terrazza—flanked by rows of orange and lemon trees, growing luxuriantly in their red earthen pots; while against the wide balustrades rested the heavily scented clusters of the camellia and the rose-tinted oleander.

Twelve years is a short space of time in Italy, where age is reckoned by the millennial, so it seemed perfectly natural, when Armstrong arrived in Florence, to find Giuseppe still at his old post and included in the lease as a part of the Villa Godilombra. The old man expressed no surprise, no delight—yet at heart he was well pleased. The previous tenants of the villa had been the unimaginative family of a German-American brewer, and their preference for beer over the wonderful vino rosso which he himself had pressed out from the luscious grapes in the vineyard filled his heart with sorrow. He confided to Annetta, the red-lipped maid Armstrong had engaged for Helen, that he “was glad to serve an ‘Americano molto importante’ rather than a porco.” And Giuseppe took great satisfaction in placing upon that last word all the emphasis needed to express six months’ accumulated disgust.

From the moment the Armstrongs arrived, Giuseppe’s admiration for Helen knew no bounds. To him she was the personification of all that was perfection. Not that he expressed it, even to Annetta—he would have forgotten mass on Good Friday sooner than so forget his place. It was rather that devotion which is born and not made—occasionally, but not often, found in those who enter so intimately into the life of those they serve, yet who must always feel themselves apart from it. Hardly a day had passed since the Armstrongs had assumed possession of the villa that Helen had not found the choicest fragole at her plate, each juicy berry carefully selected and resting upon a bed of its own leaves at the bottom of the little basket. Her room was ever redolent with the odor of the flowers he smuggled in, always unobserved; and his instructions to the more frivolous Annetta as to her duties toward the nobile donna were such as to cause that young woman to throw her head haughtily on one side, with the observation that she was probably as well acquainted with the requirements of a lady’s maid as any gardener was apt to be, even though he were old enough to be her grandfather.

This particular tiff had taken place while Armstrong and his wife were making their excursion to Fiesole. On their return they had found Giuseppe in a morose mood, which quickly vanished when Helen told him, in her broken Italian, that she expected guests upon the morrow, and depended upon him to see that every room was properly decorated, as he alone could do it. The old man could hardly wait to arrange the chairs upon the veranda, so eager was he to seek revenge upon his youthful tormentor.

“Did she ask you to arrange the flowers, young peacock-feather?” asked Giuseppe of Annetta when he found her in the kitchen. “Did she trust you even to bring the message to old Giuseppe? No. With her own lips the Eccellenza praised the one servant on whom she can rely.”

“She knows you are good for nothing else,” Annetta retorted, with a scornful laugh and a toss of her pretty head; “and she wishes to get you out of the way while we attend to the really important matters. See,” she cried, as the tinkling of the maids’ bell punctuated her remarks, “the nobile donna will now give me commands.”

Giuseppe could not so far forget his dignity as to reply to such an outrageous slander, so he contented himself with casting upon Annetta his most withering glances as she hastily brushed past him, holding back her skirts lest they be defiled by touching the old man. He watched her angrily until she vanished through the door, then, with the choicest maledictions at his command, he shuffled into the garden—into his own domain, where the present generation of ill-bred servants, as he explained to himself, could vex him not.

Mrs. John Armstrong’s first dinner at the Villa Godilombra was an unqualified success. Uncle Peabody had arrived early that morning; his optimism had set its seal of approval upon the evident happiness of the bridal couple, and he had already established himself as chief reflector of the concentrated joy