“O pittore,” called Signora Ricciardi, from the head of the table. Charles turned to her, always charmed that she should address him in this way, since he was an amateur and not very gifted painter, on holiday from a business concerned with lead and zinc. “O pittore, have you seen our three boys at all? Have they come back yet?”

Charles gestured toward the house, as if to conjure up the three young men, who at that moment came hurriedly into the garden and seated themselves at the table, murmuring apologies. Englishly alike in grave manners and incisive speech, in an almost womanish refinement of feature and fair skin reddened but not tanned by the sun, they had the names of antique Romans: Julian, Adrian, Antony. With quiet fortitude they had received, that summer, telegrams confirming success in their examinations at Cambridge. At twenty, they already offered a certain distinction and the promise of charm. The only criticism that might have been made of them was that their background and prospects had been provided so amply as to encroach a little on the scope of the present; nothing had been left to chance—perhaps on the assumption that chance is a detrimental element. “Tutto a posto,” the Signora said of them.

In her way, the Signora herself was as much “in place” as these boys; she would never have been mistaken for a voyager. Sitting at the end of the table, a slender, ageless woman with a disproportionate share of accomplishments, she chatted and rejoiced and sympathized with her guests, sharing their confidences and fulfilling their expectations, giving them a sense of infinite leisure, as though these symmetrical days of summer were to last forever. Their recollections of the villa would be almost indistinguishable from memories of her.

A little withdrawn from the talk that evening, she was listening for the arrival of a pair of unknown guests, a mother and son who were the friends of a friend. All day they had been expected—a not unwelcome intrusion into the intimacy of the present guests, who had been in one another’s company all summer. Though, indeed, it had all gone very well this year: no one had been ill or quarreled or fallen in love. They were all on the best of terms, even with Miss Nicholson.