be
placed. But no one said what he or she wished; far from it. Everybody
was very polite, wonderfully polite; everybody offered his or her place
to everybody else. Lloyd, after waiting a few moments, calmly helped
Margaret into one of the carriages, handed in her shawl, and then took a
seat himself opposite. But the rest of us surged helplessly to and fro
among the wheels, not quite knowing what to do, until the arrival of the
hotel omnibus hurried us, when we took our places hastily, without any
arrangement at all, and drove off as follows: in the first carriage,
Mrs. Trescott, Janet, Miss Elaine, and myself; in the second, Miss
Graves, Inness, Verney, and Baker; in the third, Mrs. Clary, Margaret,
Lloyd, and the Professor. This assortment was so comical that I laughed
inwardly all the way up the first hill. Miss Elaine looked as if she was
on the point of shedding tears; and the Professor, who did not enjoy the
conversation of either Margaret or Mrs. Clary, was equally discomfited.
As for the faces of the three young men shut in with Miss Graves, they
were a study. However, it did not last long. The young men soon
preferred "to walk uphill." Then we stopped at Mortola to see the
Hanbury garden, and took good care not to arrange ourselves in the same
manner a second time. Still, as four persons cannot, at least in the
present state of natural science, occupy at the same moment the space
only large enough for one, there was all day more or less manoeuvring.
From Mortola to Ventimiglia I was in the carriage with Janet, Inness,
and Verney.

"What ruin is that on the top of the hill?" said Janet. "It looks like a
castle."

"It is a castle--Castel d'Appio," said Verney; "a position taken by the
Genoese in 1221 from the Lascaris, who--"

"Stop the carriage!--I must go up," said Janet.

"I assure you, Miss Trescott, that, Lascaris or no Lascaris, you will
find yourself mummied in mud after this rain," said Inness. "_I_ went up
there in a dry time, and even then had to wade."

Now if there is anything which Janet especially cherishes, it is her
pretty boots; so Castel d'Appio remained unvisited upon its height, in
lonely majesty against the sky. The next object of interest was a square
tower, standing on the side-hill not far above the road; it was not
large on the ground, rather was it narrow, but it rose in the air to an
imposing height. I could not imagine what its use had been: it stood too
far from the sea for a lo