“Whenever I see her looking at old Vesuvius,” said Spence to Eleanor, his eye twinkling, “I feel sure that she muses on the possibility of another tremendous outbreak.  She regards him in a friendly way; he is the minister of vengeance.”

Eleanor’s discernment was not long in bringing her to a modification of this estimate.

“I am convinced, Ned, that her thoughts are not so constantly at Bartles as we imagine.  In any case, I begin to understand what she suffers from most.  It is want of occupation for her mind.  She is crushed with ennui.”

“This is irreverence.  As well attribute ennui to the Prophet Jeremiah meditating woes to come.”

“I allow you your joke, but I am right for all that.  She has nothing to think about that profoundly interests her; her books are all but as sapless to her as to you or me.  She is sinking into melancholia.”

“But, my dear girl, the chapel!”

“She only pretends to think of it.  Miriam is becoming a hypocrite I have noted several little signs of it since Cecily came.  She poses—­and in wretchedness.  Please to recollect that her age is four-and-twenty.”

“I do so frequently, and marvel at human nature.”

“I do so, and without marvelling at all, for I see human nature justifying itself.  I’ll tell you what I am going to do, I shall propose to her to begin and read Dante.”

“The ‘Inferno.’  Why, yes.”

“And I shall craftily introduce to her attention one or two wicked and worldly little books, such as, ‘The Improvisatore,’ and the ‘Golden Treasury,’ and so on.  Any such attempts at first would have been premature; but I think the time has come.”

Miriam knew no language but her own, and Eleanor by no means purposed inviting her to a course of grammar and exercise.  She herself, with her husband’s assistance, had learned to read Italian in the only rational way for mature-minded persons—­simply taking the text and a close translation, and glancing from time to time at a skeleton accidence.  This, of course, will not do in the case of fools, but Miriam Baske, all appearances notwithstanding, did not belong to that category.  On hearing her cousin’s proposition, she at first smiled coldly; but she did not reject it, and in a day or two they had made a fair beginning of the ‘Inferno.’  Such a beginning, indeed, as surprised Eleanor, who was not yet made aware that Miriam worked at the book in private with feverish energy—­drank at the fountain like one perishing of thirst.  Andersen’s exquisite story was not so readily accepted, yet this too before long showed a book-marker.  And Miriam’s countenance brightened; she could not conceal this effect.  Her step was a little lighter, and her speech became more natural.

A relapse was to be expected; it came at the bidding of sirocco.  One morning the heavens lowered, grey, rolling; it might have been England.  Vesuvius, heavily laden at first with a cloud like that on Olympus when the gods are wrathful, by degrees passed from vision, withdrew its form into recesses of dun mists.  The angry blue of Capri faded upon a troubled blending of sea and sky; everywhere the horizon contracted and grew mournful; rain began to fall.