We landed at Palermo, after a night passage in a comfortable boat from
Naples, leaving one world-famous bay to enter another scarcely less
beautiful. Rarely have I seen anything finer than Palermo and the group
of mountains round it as we steamed in at sunrise on a white and gold
morning. The ship goes alongside the quay, so there was no difficulty at
all about landing the car. It was slung, and gently deposited on shore
by the ship's crane, and we drove off on it at once to the Villa Igiea.
Everything was new to me in Sicily, and I confess that the Igiea was a
surprise. One has heard that Sicily is a hundred years behind the times,
and that in accommodation the island is deficient. That cannot be said
any longer. The Igiea is perfect. Miss Randolph reluctantly admitted
that there is nothing better in America. In situation the house is
unique, lying under the tall, pink Monte Pellegrino. It was built by the
Sicilian millionaire Florio for a sanitorium, but never so used. It is a
long building of honey-coloured stone, standing in an exquisite terraced
garden that stretches along the sea, and actually overhangs it--a
charmingly irregular garden, with many unexpected nooks, and
sweet-smelling flowers, palms, and all kinds of sub-tropical plants,
fountains playing in marble basins, and a huge, half-covered balcony,
where everyone except insignificant _chauffeurs_ assemble for tea.
Altogether a gay and delightful place, and it is having the effect of
bringing to the island a stream of rich and luxury-loving travellers.

From afar I saw Miss Randolph and Aunt Mary breakfasting on the big
balcony; and they could not have lingered long over their unpacking,
for at ten o'clock I had orders to be at the hotel door with the Napier.
I knew no more of Sicily than they did, but it is my _metier_ to keep up
the reputation of a walking encyclopaedia; therefore, in the small
watches of the night, while the Goddess and her Aunt slept the sleep of
the just, I had poured over guide-books and fat little volumes of
Sicilian history. What I wasn't prepared to tell them that heavenly
morning about Ulysses, Polyphemus, the omnipotent Roger, and other
persons of local interest, to say nothing of the right buildings to be
visited, was not worth telling.

We ran along the shore, past harbours and basins where strangely shaped
boats lay at anchor on a smooth; blue sea, with an elusive background of
shimmering, snowclad mountains; and in a street,