He had a carriage ready for the drive up the serpent road to the hotel where Mrs. Lessingham and her niece were staying.  His own quarters were elsewhere—­at the Pagano, dear to artists.

“Well, have you enjoyed the voyage?  What did you think of Sorrento?  We watched the steamer across from there; we were up on the road to Anacapri, yonder.  You don’t look so well as when I saw you last—­ nothing like.”

He waited for no reply to his questions, and talked with nervous brokenness.  Seated in the carriage, he could not keep still from one moment to the next.  His eyes had the unquiet of long-continued agitation, the look that results from intense excitement when it has become the habit of day after day.

“Mallard has been talking to you,” he said suddenly.

“Why do you say that?”

“I know he has, from your letter.—­Look at the views!”

“What plans did you speak of?”

“Oh, we’ll talk about it afterwards.  But Mallard has been talking you over?”

Miriam had no resolve by which to guide herself.  She knew not distinctly why she had come to Capri.  Her familiar self-reliance and cold disregard of anything but a few plain rules in regulating her conduct, were things of the past.  She felt herself idly swayed by conflicting influences, unable even to debate what course she should take; the one emotion of which she was clearly conscious was of so strange and disturbing a kind that, so far from impelling her to act, it seemed merely to destroy all her customary motives and leave her subject to the will of others.  It was the return of weakness such as had possessed her mind when she lay ill, when she was ceaselessly troubled with a desire for she knew not what, and, unable to utter it had no choice but to admit the suggestions and biddings of those who cared for her.  She could not even resent this language of Reuben’s, to which formerly she would have opposed her unyielding pride; his proximity infected her with nervousness, but at the same time made her flaccid before his energy.

“He came and spoke to me about you,” she admitted.  “But he left me to do as I saw fit.”

“After putting the case against me as strongly as it could be put.  I know; you needn’t tell me anything about the conversation.  Let us leave it till afterwards.—­You see how this road winds, so that the incline may be gentle enough for carriages.  There are stony little paths, just like the beds of mountain streams, going straight down to the Marina.  I lost myself again and again yesterday among the gardens and vineyards.  Look back over the bay to Naples!”

But in a minute or two the other subject was resumed, again with a suddenness that told of inability to keep from speaking his thoughts.

“You understand, I dare say, why Mallard is making such a fuss?”

“How could I help understanding?”

“But do you understand?”