much. What is very much?" she asked of Ciccio.

"Molto."

"Si, molto. Of course, I knew molto, from, music," she added.

The women made noises, and smiled and nodded, and so the train
pulsed on till they came to Rome. There was again, the wild scramble
with luggage, a general leave taking, and then the masses of people
on the station at Rome. _Roma! Roma!_ What was it to Alvina but a
name, and a crowded, excited station, and Ciccio running after the
luggage, and the pair of them eating in a station restaurant?

Almost immediately after eating, they were in the train once more,
with new fellow travellers, running south this time towards Naples.
In a daze of increasing weariness Alvina watched the dreary, to her
sordid-seeming Campagna that skirts the railway, the broken aqueduct
trailing in the near distance over the stricken plain. She saw a
tram-car, far out from everywhere, running up to cross the railway.
She saw it was going to Frascati.

And slowly the hills approached--they passed the vines of the
foothills, the reeds, and were among the mountains. Wonderful little
towns perched fortified on rocks and peaks, mountains rose straight
up off the level plain, like old topographical prints, rivers
wandered in the wild, rocky places, it all seemed ancient and
shaggy, savage still, under all its remote civilization, this region
of the Alban Mountains south of Rome. So the train clambered up and
down, and went round corners.

They had not far to go now. Alvina was almost too tired to care what
it would be like. They were going to Ciccio's native village. They
were to stay in the house of his uncle, his mother's brother. This
uncle had been a model in London. He had built a house on the land
left by Ciccio's grandfather. He lived alone now, for his wife was
dead and his children were abroad. Giuseppe was his son: Giuseppe of
Battersea, in whose house Alvina had stayed.

This much Alvina knew. She knew that a portion of the land down at
Pescocalascio belonged to Ciccio: a bit of half-savage, ancient
earth that had been left to his mother by old Francesco Califano,
her hard-grinding peasant father. This land remained integral in the
property, and was worked by Ciccio's two uncles, Pancrazio and
Giovanni. Pancrazio was the well-to-do uncle, who had been a model
and had built a "villa." Giovanni was not much good. That was how
Ciccio put it.

They expected Pancrazio to meet them at the station. Ciccio
collected his