Complete silence.

Then Scrap said, turning to Mrs. Wilkins, “That settles Mellersh, then.”

“It settles the question of Mr. Wilkins,” said Mrs. Fisher, “although I am unable to understand that there should ever have been a question, in the only way that is right.”

“I’m afraid you’re in for it, then,” said Lady Caroline, again to Mrs. Wilkins.  “Unless,” she added, “he can’t come.”

But Mrs. Wilkins, her brow perturbed—­for suppose after all she were not yet quite stable in heaven?—­could only say, a little uneasily, “I see him here.”

Chapter 13

The uneventful days—­only outwardly uneventful—­slipped by in floods of sunshine, and the servants, watching the four ladies, came to the conclusion there was very little life in them.

To the servants San Salvatore seemed asleep.  No one came to tea, nor did the ladies go anywhere to tea.  Other tenants in other springs had been far more active.  There had been stir and enterprise; the boat had been used; excursions had been made; Beppo’s fly was ordered; people from Mezzago came over and spent the day; the house rang with voices; even sometimes champagne had been drunk.  Life was varied, life was interesting.  But this?  What was this?  The servants were not even scolded.  They were left completely to themselves.  They yawned.

Perplexing, too, was the entire absence of gentlemen.  How could gentlemen keep away from so much beauty?  For, added up, and even after the subtraction of the old one, the three younger ladies produced a formidable total of that which gentlemen usually sought.

Also the evident desire of each lady to spend long hours separated from the other ladies puzzled the servants.  The result was a deathly stillness in the house, except at meal-times.  It might have been as empty as it had been all the winter, for any sounds of life there were.  The old lady sat in her room, alone; the dark-eyed lady wandered off alone, loitering, so Domenico told them, who sometimes came across her in the course of his duties, incomprehensibly among the rocks; the very beautiful fair lady lay in her low chair in the top garden, alone; the less, but still beautiful fair lady want up the hills and stayed up them for hours, alone; and every day the sun blazed slowly round the house, and disappeared at evening into the sea, and nothing at all had happened.

The servants yawned.

Yes the four visitors, while their bodies sat—­that was Mrs. Fisher’s—­or lay—­that was Lady Caroline’s—­or loitered—­that was Mrs. Arbuthnot’s—­or went in solitude up into the hills—­that was Mrs. Wilkins’s—­were anything but torpid really.  Their minds were unusually busy.  Even at night their minds were busy, and the dreams they had were clear, thin, quick things, entirely different from the heavy dreams of home.  There was that in the atmosphere of San