‘Which is the hard one to please?’ she asked.

‘The one you will find the kinder of the two.’

‘Henrietta?’

He nodded.

‘Has she a father?’

‘A gallant old admiral:  Admiral Baldwin Fakenham.’

‘I am glad of that!’ Carinthia sighed out heartily.  ’And he is with her?  And likes you, Chillon?’

‘On the whole, I think he does.’

‘A brave officer!’ Such a father would be sure to like him.

So the domestic prospect was hopeful.

At sunset they stood on the hills overlooking the basin of the Baths, all enfolded in swathes of pink and crimson up to the shining grey of a high heaven that had the fresh brightness of the morning.

‘We are not tired in the slightest,’ said Carinthia, trifling with the vision of a cushioned rest below.  ’I could go on through the night quite comfortably.’

‘Wait till you wake up in your little bed to-morrow,’ Chillon replied stoutly, to drive a chill from his lover’s heart, that had seized it at the bare suggestion of their going on.

CHAPTER VII

THE LADY’S LETTER

Is not the lover a prophet?  He that fervently desires may well be one; his hurried nature is alive with warmth to break the possible blow:  and if his fears were not needed they were shadows; and if fulfilled, was he not convinced of his misfortune by a dark anticipation that rarely erred?  Descending the hills, he remembered several omens:  the sun had sunk when he looked down on the villas and clustered houses, not an edge of the orb had been seen; the admiral’s quarters in the broad-faced hotel had worn an appearance resembling the empty house of yesterday; the encounter with the fellow on the rocks had a bad whisper of impish tripping.  And what moved Carinthia to speak of going on?

A letter was handed to Chillon in the hall of the admiral’s hotel, where his baggage had already been delivered.  The manager was deploring the circumstance that his rooms were full to the roof, when Chillon said: 

‘Well, we must wash and eat’; and Carinthia, from watching her brother’s forehead during his perusal of the letter, declared her readiness for anything.  He gave her the letter to read by herself while preparing to sit at table, unwilling to ask her for a further tax on her energies—­but it was she who had spoken of going on!  He thought of it as of a debt she had contracted and might be supposed to think payable to their misfortune.

She read off the first two sentences.

’We can have a carriage here, Chillon; order a carriage; I shall get as much sleep in a carriage as in a bed:  I shall enjoy driving at night,’ she said immediately, and strongly urged it and forced him to yield, the manager observing that a carriage could be had.

In the privacy of her room, admiring the clear flowing hand, she read the words, delicious in their strangeness to her, notwithstanding the heavy news, as though they were sung out of a night-sky: