“That young man’s youth is over,” said Meredith, abruptly, to the Duchess one evening.  He pointed to the figure of Delafield, who was pacing, alone with his pipe, up and down one of the lower terraces of the garden.

The Duchess showed a teased expression.

“It’s like something wearing through,” she said, slowly.  “I suppose it was always there, but it didn’t show.”

“Name your ‘it.’”

“I can’t.”  But she gave a little shudder, which made Meredith look at her with curiosity.

“You feel something ghostly—­unearthly?”

She nodded assent; crying out, however, immediately afterwards, as though in compunction, that he was one of the dearest and best of fellows.

“Of course he is,” said Meredith.  “It is only the mystic in him coming out.  He is one of the men who have the sixth sense.”

“Well, all I know is, he has the oddest power over people,” said Evelyn, with another shiver.  “If Freddie had it, my life wouldn’t be worth living.  Thank goodness, he hasn’t a vestige!”

“At bottom it’s the power of the priest,” said Meredith.  “And you women are far too susceptible towards it.  Nine times out of ten it plays the mischief.”

The Duchess was silent a moment.  Then she bent towards her companion, finger on lip, her charming eyes glancing significantly towards the lower terrace.  The figures on it were now two.  Julie and Delafield paced together.

“But this is the tenth!” she said, in an eager whisper.

Meredith smiled at her, then flung her a dubious “Chi sa?” and changed the subject.

* * * * *

Delafield, who was a fine oar, had soon taken command of the lake expeditions; and by the help of two stalwart youths from Tremezzo, the four-oar was in use from morning till night.  Through the broad lake which lies between Menaggio and Varenna it sped northward to Gravedona; or beneath the shadowy cliffs of the Villa Serbelloni it slipped over deep waters, haunted and dark, into the sunny spaces of Lecco; or it coasted along the steep sides of Monte Primo, so that the travellers in it might catch the blue stain of the gentians on the turf, where it sloped into the lucent wave below, or watch the fishermen on the rocks, spearing their prey in the green or golden shallows.

The weather was glorious—­a summer before its time.  The wild cherries shook down their snow upon the grass; but the pears were now in bridal white, and a warmer glory of apple-blossom was just beginning to break upon the blue.  The nights were calm and moonlit; the dawns were visions of mysterious and incredible beauty, wherein mountain and forest and lake were but the garments, diaphanous, impalpable, of some delicate, indwelling light and fire spirit, which breathed and pulsed through the solidity of rock, no less visibly than through the crystal leagues of air or the sunlit spaces of water.