One evening they had left the boat at Tremezzo, that they might walk back along that most winning of paths that skirts the lake between the last houses of Tremezzo and the inn at Cadenabbia.  The sunset was nearly over, but the air was still suffused with its rose and pearl, and fragrant with the scent of flowering laurels.  Each mountain face, each white village, either couched on the water’s edge or grouped about its slender campanile on some shoulder of the hills, each house and tree and figure seemed still penetrated with light, the glorified creatures of some just revealed and already fading world.  The echoes of the evening bell were floating on the lake, and from a boat in front, full of peasant-folk, there rose a sound of singing, some litany of saint or virgin, which stole in harmonies, rudely true, across the water.

“They have been to the pilgrimage church above Lenno,” said Julie, pointing to the boat, and in order to listen to the singing, she found a seat on a low wall above the lake.

There was no reply, and, looking round her, she saw with a start that only Delafield was beside her, that the Duchess and Meredith had already rounded the corner of the Villa Carlotta and were out of sight.

Delafield’s gaze was fixed upon her.  He was very pale, and suddenly Julie’s breath seemed to fail her.

“I don’t think I can bear it any longer,” he said, as he came close to her.

“Bear what?”

“That you should look as you do now.”

Julie made no reply.  Her eyes, very sad and bitter, searched the blue dimness of the lake in silence.

Delafield sat down on the wall beside her.  Not a soul was in sight.  At the Cadenabbia Hotel, the table d’hote had gathered in the visitors; a few boats passed and repassed in the distance, but on land all was still.

Suddenly he took her hand with a firm grasp.

“Are you never going to forgive me?” he said, in a low voice.

“I suppose I ought to bless you.”

Her face seemed to him to express the tremulous misery of a heart deeply, perhaps irrevocably, wounded.  Emotion rose in a tide, but he crushed it down.

He bent over her, speaking with deliberate tenderness.

“Julie, do you remember what you promised Lord Lackington when he was dying?”

“Oh!” cried Julie.

She sprang to her feet, speechless and suffocated.  Her eyes expressed a mingled pride and terror.

He paused, confronting her with a pale resolution.

“You didn’t know that I had seen him?”

“Know!”

She turned away fiercely, choking with sobs she could hardly control, as the memory of that by-gone moment returned upon her.

“I thought as much,” said Delafield, in a low voice.  “You hoped never to hear of your promise again.”