“I really must get on—my husband expects me back in Florence this evening. I drove out to meet these friends, you see, and got lost coming over the mountain. The village isn’t on the map, and I relied on someone being able to tell me the road.”

“It’s not a village at all.” The Conte slapped the arm of his chair. “Not the Sant’Andrea you’re looking for. It’s an old estate with an enclave of houses round the main building.”

“My friends have rented a house for the summer. I don’t even know the owner’s name. The house is called—”

“Il Palazzolo.”

“How ever did you know?”

The Conte and his consort exchanged a gleeful smile. The Contessa explained, “There’s only one house there it could be—”

“And that’s my cousin’s! He always rents it out to foreigners for the summer. Keeps him there in comfort for the rest of the year.” Now the old man slapped his bald head in dismay. “Wrong thing to say. I beg your pardon.”

The lemonade was brought by a brawny country boy wearing white cotton gloves. Leaning back on the sofa, which was covered with a pretty chintz of lilac flowers, Mrs. Drew looked about her. Since this could not, in the circumstances, be done discreetly, she said aloud what she was thinking. “What a charming room!”

Like the house itself, the room was not splendid. It was comfortable, even lovable, a room of armchairs, of small tables and small objects, of flowers and photographs—of photographs above all. Young people, swimming, riding, skiing; formal portraits of babies, snapshots of children playing with animals; a boy being presented with a heavy book; a shy girl in the tight-waisted, long-skirted dress that in 1947 was known as the New Look. There were houses, gardens, parties on terraces, groups on beaches, a couple in a gondola. On some photographs the written messages were so long that they disappeared into the frame; other pictures had been mounted in pairs or as a series.

“These are your children?”

The Contessa did not at once respond, but leaned over the back of the sofa where they sat and handed Mrs. Drew a youngish woman in a garden chair. “This is my daughter.” After a moment, she added, “She lives in Argentina. In Buenos Aires.”

“Does she come here? Do you go there?”

The Contessa put the photograph back. “Her husband represents an Italian company there. She comes—yes—every four years, for a few weeks. They’ve been out there for eighteen years.”

The Conte said, “At first they thought they would be sent home after a few years—so we didn’t go. And now we’re too old, it’s too far.”

“And—this is your son?” Mrs. Drew put down her glass and took up a picture from the table beside her.