At first, whenever he entered the room, whenever he approached her, her sense of anger and resentment had been almost unbearable.  But little by little his courtesy, tact, and coolness had restored a relation between them which, if not the old one, had still many of the outward characters of intimacy.  Not a word, not the remotest allusion reminded her of what had happened.  The man who had stood before her transfigured on the deck of the steamer, stammering out, “I thank God I had the courage to do it!”—­it was often hard for her to believe, as she stole a look at Delafield, chatting or writing in the Duchess’s drawing-room, that such a scene had ever taken place.

* * * * *

The evening stole on.  How was it that whenever she allowed the thought of Delafield to obtain a real lodgment in the mind, even the memory of Warkworth was for the time effaced?  Silently, irresistibly, a wild heat of opposition would develop within her.  These men round whom, as it were, there breathes an air of the heights; in whom one feels the secret guard that religion keeps over thoughts and words and acts—­her passionate yet critical nature flung out against them.  How are they better than others, after all?  What right have they over the wills of others?

Nevertheless, as the rose of evening burned on the craggy mountain face beyond Bellaggio, retreating upward, step by step, till the last glorious summit had died into the cool and already starlit blues of night, Julie, held, as it were, by a reluctant and half-jealous fascination, sat dreaming on the hill-side, not now of Warkworth, not of the ambitions of the mind, or society, but simply of the goings and comings, the aspects and sayings of a man in whose eyes she had once read the deepest and sternest things of the soul—­a condemnation and an anguish above and beyond himself.

* * * * *

Dr. Meredith arrived in due time, a jaded Londoner athirst for idleness and fresh air.  The Duchess and Julie carried him hither and thither about the lake in the four-oar boat which had been hired for the Duchess’s pleasure.  Here, enthroned between the two ladies, he passed luxurious hours, and his talk of politics, persons, and books brought just that stimulus to Julie’s intelligence and spirits for which the Duchess had been secretly longing.

A first faint color returned to Julie’s cheeks.  She began to talk again; to resume certain correspondences; to show herself once more—­at any rate intermittently—­the affectionate, sympathetic, and beguiling friend.

As for Meredith, he knew little, but he suspected a good deal.  There were certain features in her illness and convalescence which suggested to him a mental cause; and if there were such a cause, it must, of course, spring from her relations to Warkworth.

The name of that young officer was never mentioned.  Once or twice Meredith was tempted to introduce it.  It rankled in his mind that Julie had never been frank with him, freely as he had poured his affection at her feet.  But a moment of languor or of pallor disarmed him.