The household was long since restored to self-possession and even cheerfulness.  Some felt pride in their passing publicity, and none expressed any fear of remaining.  But Sir Walter guessed that few feet would tread the great corridor until a day was near for his return.

CHAPTER X

SIGNOR VERGILIO MANNETTI

Sir Walter persisted in his purpose and went to Florence.  He believed that here Mary might find distractions and novelties to awaken interest which would come freshly into her life without the pain and poignancy of any recollection to lessen the work of peace.  For himself he only desired to see her returning to content.  Happiness he knew must be a condition far removed from her spirit for many days.

They stood one evening on the Piazza of Michelangelo and saw Florence, like a city of dim, red gold extended beneath them.  The setting sunlight wove an enchantment over towers and roofs.  It spread a veil of ineffable brightness upon the city and tinged green Arno also, where the river wound through the midst.

Sir Walter was quietly happy, because he knew that in a fortnight his friends, Ernest and Nelly Travers, would be at Florence.  Mary, too, prepared to welcome them gladly, for her father’s sake.  He left his daughter largely undisturbed, and while they took their walks together, the old man, to whom neither music nor pictures conveyed much significance, let her wander at will, and the more readily because he found that art was beginning to exercise a precious influence over Mary’s mind.  There was none to guide her studies, but she pursued them with a plan of her own, and though at first the effort sometimes left her weary, yet she persisted until she began to perceive at least the immensity of the knowledge she desired to acquire.

Music soothed her mind; painting offered an interest, part sensuous, part intellectual.  Perhaps she loved music best at first, since it brought a direct anodyne.  In the sound of music she could bear to think of her brief love story.  She even made her father come and listen presently to things that she began to value.

Their minds inevitably proceeded by different channels of thought, and while she strove resolutely to occupy herself with the new interests, and put away the agony of the past, till thinking was bearable again and a road to peace under her feet once more, Sir Walter seldom found himself passing many hours without recurrence of painful memories and a sustained longing to strip the darkness which buried them.  To his forthright and simple intelligence, mystery was hateful, and the reflection that his home must for ever hold a profound and appalling mystery often thrust itself upon his thoughts, and even inclined him, in some moods, to see Chadlands no more.  Yet a natural longing to return to the old environment, in which he could move with ease and comfort, gradually mastered him, and as the spring advanced he often sighed for Devonshire, yet wondered how he could do so.  Then would return the gloomy history of the winter rolling over his spirit like a cloud, and the thought of going home again grew distasteful.