“A book came by the postman, signora, and the master must needs hire boat and cross at once,” explained Ernesto, who spoke good English and was proud of his accomplishment.

Jenny waited impatiently and she was at the landing stage when Albert returned.  He smiled to see her and took off his great slouch hat.

“My beloved Virgilio was overjoyed that I should have found the famous book—­the veritable Italian edition of Sir Thomas Browne—­his ‘Pseudodoxia Epidemica.’  A red-letter day for us both!  But—­but—­” He looked at Jenny’s frightened eyes and felt her hand upon his sleeve.  “Why, what is wrong?  You are alarmed.  No ill news of Giuseppe?”

“Come home quickly,” she answered, “and I will explain.  A very terrible thing has happened.  I cannot think what we should do.  Only this I know:  I am not going to leave you again until it is cleared up.”

At home Albert took off his great hat and cloak.  Then he sat in his study—­an amazing chamber, lined with books to the lofty ceiling and dark in tone by reason of the prevalent rich but sombre bindings of five thousand volumes.  Jenny told him that she had seen Robert Redmayne, whereupon her uncle considered for five minutes, then declared himself both puzzled and alarmed.  He showed no fear, however, and his large, luminous eyes shone out of his little, withered face unshadowed.  None the less he was quick to read danger into this extraordinary incident.

“You are positive?” he asked.  “Everything depends on that.  If you have seen my unfortunate, vanished brother again here, so near to me, it is exceedingly amazing, Jenny.  Can you say positively, without a shadow of doubt, that the melancholy figure was not a figment of your imagination, or some stranger who resembled Robert?”

“I wish to Heaven I could, Uncle Albert.  But I am positive.”

“The very fact that he appeared exactly as you saw him last—­in the big tweed suit and red waistcoat—­would support an argument in favour of hallucination,” declared her uncle.  “For how on earth can the poor creature, if he be really still alive, have remained in those clothes for a year and travelled half across Europe in them?”

“It is monstrous.  And yet there he stood and I saw him as clearly as I see you.  He was certainly not in my thoughts.  I was thinking of nothing and talking to Assunta about the silkworms, when suddenly he appeared, not twenty yards away.”

“What did you do?”

“I made a fool of myself,” confessed Jenny.  “Assunta says that I cried out very loud and then toppled over and fainted.  When I came round there was nothing to be seen.”

“The point is then:  did Assunta see him also?”

“That was the first thing I found out.  I hoped she had not.  That would have saved the situation in a way and proved it was only some picture of the mind as you suggest.  But she saw him clearly enough—­so clearly that she described a red man not Italian, but English or German.  She heard him, too.  When I cried out he leaped away into the woods.”