midday
Gheta Sanviano often passed a night at the Mantegazzas ' villa on the Height of Castena , a long mile from the city . Lavinia , too , knew the dwelling well , for Sanviano and Pier Mantegazza had been intimate from their similar beginnings , and she had played there as a child . However , she had never been regularly asked with Gheta ; and when that occurred -- Gheta indifferently delivered Anna Mantegazza 's message -- and her mother acquiesced , Lavinia had a renewed sense of her growing importance . She went out early , in the heat of midday , a time that fitted best with the involved schedule of the Sanvianos ' single equipage -- Anna would take her sister directly from a luncheon at the Ginoris ' . Lavinia looked with mingled anticipation and relief at the approaching graceful façade added scarcely a hundred and fifty years before to the otherwise somber abode of the Mantegazzas , first established in the twelfth century . The villa stood on an eminence , circled by austere pines , and terraced with innumerable vegetable gardens and frugally planted olives . The road mounted abruptly , turned under a frowning wall incongruously topped with delicately painted urns , and doubled across the massive iron-bound door that closed the arched entrance .