nt did Lilia
realize that her marriage was a failure; yet during the summer and
autumn she became as unhappy as it was possible for her nature to be.
She had no unkind treatment, and few unkind words, from her husband.
He simply left her alone. In the morning he went out to do "business,"
which, as far as she could discover, meant sitting in the Farmacia. He
usually returned to lunch, after which he retired to another room and
slept. In the evening he grew vigorous again, and took the air on
the ramparts, often having his dinner out, and seldom returning till
midnight or later. There were, of course, the times when he was away
altogether--at Empoli, Siena, Florence, Bologna--for he delighted in
travel, and seemed to pick up friends all over the country. Lilia often
heard what a favorite he was.

She began to see that she must assert herself, but she could not see
how. Her self-confidence, which had overthrown Philip, had gradually
oozed away. If she left the strange house there was the strange little
town. If she were to disobey her husband and walk in the country, that
would be stranger still--vast slopes of olives and vineyards, with
chalk-white farms, and in the distance other slopes, with more olives
and more farms, and more little towns outlined against the cloudless
sky. "I don't call this country," she would say. "Why, it's not as wild
as Sawston Park!" And, indeed, there was scarcely a touch of wildness
in it--some of those slopes had been under cultivation for two thousand
years. But it was terrible and mysterious all the same, and its
continued presence made Lilia so uncomfortable that she forgot her
nature and began to reflect.

She reflected chiefly about her marriage. The ceremony had been hasty
and expensive, and the rites, whatever they were, were not those of the
Church of England. Lilia had no religion in her; but for hours at a
time she would be seized with a vulgar fear that she was not "married
properly," and that her social position in the next world might be as
obscure as it was in this. It might be safer to do the thing thoroughly,
and one day she took the advice of Spiridione and joined the Roman
Catholic Church, or as she called it, "Santa Deodata's." Gino approved;
he, too, thought it safer, and it was fun confessing, though the priest
was a stupid old man, and the whole thing was a good slap in the face
for the people at home.

The people at home took the slap very soberly; indeed, there we