Deep shade was here, in those of the chambers whose roofs remained intact; shade, and a steamy heat, and the noxious odour of some mineral product—­the healing waters.  He strayed in the twilight through halls and corridors, past ample saloons and rows of cells which had apparently served for convenience of disrobing.  Everywhere that noisome smell accompanied his footsteps; the place was reeking with it.  And all was in decay.  Gaudy paper hung in tatters from the ceilings; the dust lay thick, undisturbed for generations.  Unclean things littered in musty corners.  Through gaping skylights a sunny beam would penetrate; it played about the mildewy stucco partitions encrusted, in patches, with a poisonous lichen of bright green.  Wandering about this dank and mournful pile of wreckage, he could understand why simple folks should dread to enter so ghoul-haunted a spot.

Gladly he issued, by way of an obscure passage, into what had once been a trim garden.  No trace of flowers or shrubs remained; the walks, the ornamental stone seats and artificial terraces, were merging into brown earth.  Here, in the centre of this ruined pleasaunce, the health-giving fountain had lately flowed, bubbling up in a couch-shaped basin of cement.  It was now dry.  But a damp warmth still clung to its rim, whereon the mineral had left a comely deposit of opaline texture.  Lowering his hand he felt an intermittent stream of hot air rising out of the ground, feeble as the breath of a dying man.  Still some mysterious gusts of life down there, he concluded, in the dark earth.  How curious that volcanic connection with the mainland, of which Count Caloveglia had spoken!

Soon he found himself beside the shattered framework of a small pavilion, built in a grotesque Chinese style and looking woefully out of place in this classic landscape, with the blue Tyrrhenian at its foot.  And here he rested.  He surveyed the traces of the old path leading down from the higher lands in serpentine meanderings; that path—­once, doubtless, bordered by shady trees—­whereby all those worldly invalids had once descended.  He pictured the lively caravan afoot, on mule-back, in sedan chairs, seeking health and pleasure at this site, now so void of life.  Lower down, almost within a stone’s throw, lay the beach.  The sailors, father and son, had drawn the boat up to the shore and were sitting huddled up on its shady side, with some food between them on a coloured handkerchief.  That Brobdingnagian luncheon-basket had also been disembarked.  Keith was swimming, together with his two genii; he looked like a rosy Silenus.  They seemed to be enjoying themselves vastly, to judge by the outbursts of laughter.  Mr. Heard thought of going to join the fun, but gave up the idea; there was something astir that clogged his energies.

He knew them—­these Southern noons.  If no ghost resided in the melancholy ruin hard by, there might well be some imponderable hostile essence afloat in the still air of midday.  Anything, he felt, could happen at this unearthly hour.  The wildest follies might be committed at the bidding of this unseen Presence.