ntractors of London. Macpherson
charged me for that sham antiquity a preposterous price, at
which one ought to procure a real ancestral mansion. Now, _these_
castles are real. They are hoary with antiquity. Schloss Tyrol is
Romanesque--tenth or eleventh century." (He had been reading it up
in Baedeker.) "That's the sort of place for _me_!--tenth or eleventh
century. I could live here, remote from stocks and shares, for ever;
and in these sequestered glens, recollect, Sey, my boy, there are
no Colonel Clays, and no arch Madame Picardets!"

As a matter of fact, he could have lived there six weeks, and then
tired for Park Lane, Monte Carlo, Brighton.

As for Amelia, strange to say, she was equally taken with this new
fad of Charles's. As a rule she hates everywhere on earth save
London, except during the time when no respectable person can be
seen in town, and when modest blinds shade the scandalised face of
Mayfair and Belgravia. She bores herself to death even at Seldon
Castle, Ross-shire, and yawns all day long in Paris or Vienna. She
is a confirmed Cockney. Yet, for some occult reason, my amiable
sister-in-law fell in love with South Tyrol. She wanted to vegetate
in that lush vegetation. The grapes were being picked; pumpkins hung
over the walls; Virginia creeper draped the quaint gray schlosses
with crimson cloaks; and everything was as beautiful as a dream of
Burne-Jones's. (I know I am quite right in mentioning Burne-Jones,
especially in connection with Romanesque architecture, because I
heard him highly praised on that very ground by our friend and
enemy, Dr. Edward Polperro.) So perhaps it was excusable that
Amelia should fall in love with it all, under the circumstances;
besides, she is largely influenced by what Cesarine says, and
Cesarine declares there is no climate in Europe like Meran in
winter. I do not agree with her. The sun sets behind the hills at
three in the afternoon, and a nasty warm wind blows moist over
the snow in January and February.

However, Amelia set Cesarine to inquire of the people at the hotel
about the market price of tumbledown ruins, and the number of such
eligible family mausoleums just then for sale in the immediate
neighbourhood. Cesarine returned with a full, true, and particular
list, adorned with flowers of rhetoric which would have delighted
the soul of good old John Robins. They were all picturesque, all
Romanesque, all richly ivy-clad, all commodious, all historical,
and