“For the very special reason,” he answered, with vehemence, “that I fear the presence near me of—­” He held his breath for a second, the flame in his eyes enveloping her; then, with an abrupt change of tone and mien, he ended, “—­of Frau Brandt might distract my attention from the sermon.”

She laughed, and said, “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” said John.  And when she was halfway through the tunnel-like passage, “I suppose you know you are leaving me to a day as barren as the Desert of Sahara?” he called after her.

“Oh, who can tell what a day may bring forth?” called she, but without looking back.

For a long while John’s faculties were kept busy, trying to determine whether that was a promise, a menace, or a mere word in the air.

III

“Rain before seven, clear before eleven,” is as true, or as untrue, in Lombardy as it is in other parts of the world.  The rain had held up, and now, in that spirited phrase of Corvo’s, “here came my lord the Sun,” splendidly putting the clouds to flight, or chaining them, transfigured, to his chariot-wheels; clothing the high snow-peaks in a roseate glory, (that seemed somehow, I don’t know why, to accent their solitude and their remoteness); flooding the valley with ethereal amber; turning the swollen Rampio to a river of fire while the nearer hillsides, the olive woods, the trees in the Castle garden, glistened with a million million crystals, and the petals of the flowers were crystal-tipped; while the breath of the earth rose in long streamers of luminous incense, and the sky gleamed with every tender, every brilliant, tint of blue, from the blue of pale forgetmenots to the blue of larkspur.

John, contemplating this spectacle, (and thinking of Maria Dolores? revolving still her cryptic valediction?), all at once, as his eye rested on the shimmer at the valley’s end which he knew to be the lake, lifted up his hand and clapped his brow.  “By Jove,” he muttered, “if I wasn’t within an ace of clean forgetting!” The sight of the lake had fortunately put him in mind that he was engaged to-day to lunch with Lady Blanchemain at Roccadoro.

He found her ladyship, in a frock all concentric whirls of crisp white ruffles, vigorously wielding a fan, and complaining of the heat.  (Indeed, as Annunziata had predicted, it had grown markedly warmer.) “I shall fly away, if this continues; I shall fly straight to town, and set my house in order for the season.  When do you come?” she asked, smiling on him from her benign old eyes.

“I don’t come,” answered John.  “I rather like town in autumn and winter, when it’s too dark to see its ugliness, but save me from it in the clear light of summer.”

“Fudge,” said Lady Blanchemain.  “London’s the most beautiful capital in Europe—­it’s grandiose.  And it’s the only place where there are any people.

“Yes,” said John, “but, as at Nice and Homburg, too many of them are English.  And there’s a liberal scattering, I’ve heard, of Jews?”