Lord Blythe took off his spectacles, folded up the letter and put it in his pocket.  Then he looked out towards the lake and the charming picture it presented.  How delightful it would be to see Innocent in one of those dainty boats scattered about near the water’s edge, revelling with all the keenness of a bright, imaginative temperament in the natural loveliness around her!  Young, and with the promise of a brilliant career opening out before her, happiness seemed ready and waiting to bless and to adorn the life of the little deserted girl who, left alone in the world, had nevertheless managed to win the world’s hearing through the name she had made for herself—­yet now—­yes!—­now there was the cruel suggestion of a shadow—­an ugly darkness like a black cloud, blotting the fairness of a blue sky,—­and Blythe felt an uncomfortable sense of premonition and wrong as the thought of Amadis de Jocelyn came into his head and stayed there.  What was he that he should creep into the unspoiled sphere of a woman’s opening life?  A painter, something of a genius in his line, but erratic and unstable in his character,—­known more or less for several “affairs of gallantry” which had slipped off his easy conscience like water off a duck’s back,—­not a highly cultured man by any means, because ignorant of many of the finer things in art and letters, and without any positively assured position.  Yet, undoubtedly a man of strong physical magnetism and charm—­ fascinating in his manner, especially on first acquaintance, and capable of overthrowing many a stronger citadel than the tender heart of a sensitive girl like Innocent, who by a most curious mischance had been associated all her life with the romance of his medieval name and lineage.

“Yes—­of course she must come out here,” Blythe decided, after a few minutes’ cogitation.  “I’ll send a wire to Miss Leigh this morning and follow it up by a letter to the child herself, urging her to join me.  The change and distraction will perhaps save her from too much association with Jocelyn,—­I do not trust that man—­ never have trusted him!  Poor little girl!  She shall not have her spirit broken if I can help it.”

He stayed yet another few minutes at the open window, and taking out a cigar from his case began to light it.  While doing this his eye was suddenly caught by the picturesque, well-knit figure of a man sitting easily on a step near the clustering boats gathered close to the hotel’s special landing place.  He was apparently one of the many road-side artists one meets everywhere about the Italian Lakes, ready to paint a sunset or moonlight on Como or Maggiore on commission at short notice for a few francs.  He was not young—­his white hair and grizzled moustache marked the unpleasing passage of resistless time,—­yet there was something lissom and graceful about him that suggested a kind of youth in age.  His attire consisted of much worn brown trousers and a loose white shirt kept in place by a red belt,—­his