“My dear chap, what does that matter?” and Blythe gave him a light friendly blow on the shoulder.  “We can put all these exterior matters right in no time.  Trust me!—­Are we not old friends?  You have come back from death, as it seems, just when your child may need you—­she does need you—­every young girl needs some protector in this world, especially when her name has become famous, and a matter of public talk and curiosity.  Ah!  I can already see her joy when she throws her arms around your neck and says ‘My father!’ I would gladly change places with you for that one exquisite moment!”

They stayed together all that day and night.  Lord Blythe sent his wire to Miss Leigh, and wrote his letter,—­then both men settled down, as it were, to wait.  Armitage went off for two days to Milan, and returned transformed in dress, looking the very beau-ideal of an handsome Englishman,—­and the people at Bellaggio who had known him as the wandering landscape painter “Pietro Corri” failed to recognise him now in his true self.

“Yes,” said Blythe again, with the fine unselfishness which was part of his nature, when at the end of one of their many conversations concerning Innocent, he had gone over every detail he could think of which related to her life and literary success—­ “When she comes she will give you all her heart, Pierce!  She will be proud and glad,—­she will think of no one but her beloved father!  She is like that!  She is full of an unspent love—­you will possess it all!”

And in his honest joy for the joy of others, he never once thought of Amadis de Jocelyn.

CHAPTER XI

It was a gusty September afternoon in London, and autumn had given some unpleasing signs of its early presence in the yellow leaves that flew whirling over the grass in Kensington Gardens and other open spaces where trees spread their kind boughs to the rough and chilly wind.  A pretty little elm in Miss Leigh’s tiny garden was clothed in gold instead of green, and shook its glittering foliage down with every breath of air like fairy coins minted from the sky.  Innocent, leaning from her study window, watched the falling brightness with an unwilling sense of pain and foreboding.

“Summer is over, I’m afraid!” she sighed—­“Such a wonderful summer it has been for me!—­the summer of my life—­the summer of my love!  Oh, dear summer, stay just a little longer!”

And the verse of a song, sung so often as to have become hackneyed, rang in her ears—­

“Falling leaf and fading tree, Lines of white in a sullen sea, Shadows rising on you and me—­The swallows are making them ready to fly, Wheeling out on a windy sky:  Good-bye, Summer!  Good-bye, good-bye!”