It pleased him to write letters with Belthorpe Park printed on the top of the first page, and he wrote many for this reason.  Quick with affectionate remembrances, he thought of friends he had not thought of for years, and the sadnesses of these separations touched him deeply; and the mutability of things moved him in his very entrails, and he thought that perhaps no one had felt these things as he felt them.  He remembered the women who had passed out of his life, and looking out on his English park, soaking with rain and dim with mist, he remembered those whom he had loved, and the peak whence he viewed the desert district of his amours—­Lily Young.  She haunted in his life.

He saw himself a knight in the tourney, and her eyes fixed on him, while he calmed his fiery dexter and tilted for her; he saw her in the silk comfort of the brougham, by his side, their bodies rocked gently together; he saw her in the South when reading Mrs. Byril’s descriptions of rocky coast and olive fields.

The English park lay deep in snow, and the familiar word roses then took magical significance, and the imagined Southern air was full of Lily.

“There’s a sweet girl here, and I’m sure you would like her; she is so slender, so blithe and winsome, and so wayward.  She has been sent abroad for her health, and is forbidden to go out after sunset, but will not obey.  I am afraid she is dying of consumption....  She has taken a great fancy to me.  There is no one in our hotel but a few old maids, who discuss the peerage, and she runs after me to talk about men.  I fancy she must have carried on pretty well with some one, for she loves talking about him, and is full of mysterious allusions.”

The romance of the sudden introduction of this girl into the landscape took him by the throat.  He saw himself walking with this dying girl in the beauty of blue mountains toppling into blue skies, and reflected in bluer seas; he sat with her beneath the palm-trees; palms spread their fan-like leaves upon sky and sea, and in the rich green of their leaves oranges grew to deep, and lemons to paler, gold; and he dreamed that the knowledge that the object of his love was transitory, would make his love perfect and pure.  Now in his solitude, with no object to break it, this desire for love in death haunted in his mind.  It rose unbidden, like a melody, stealing forth and surprising him in unexpected moments.  Often he asked himself why he did not pack up his portmanteau and rush away; and he was only deterred by the apparent senselessness of the thought.  “What slaves we are of habit!  Why more stupid to go than to remain?”

Soon after, he received another letter from Mrs. Byril.  He glanced through it eagerly for some mention of the girl.  Whatever there was of sweetness and goodness in Mike’s nature was reflected in his eyes (soft violet eyes, in which tenderness dwelt), whatever there was of evil was written in the lips and chin (puckered lips and goat-like chin), the long neck and tiny head accentuating the resemblance.