His appearance gave her a pause; and in the result she in her turn almost apologized.

“This wretched book,” she explained, pathetically bringing forward her piece justificative, “said that it was open to the public.”

The vivid young man hastened to put her in the right.

“It is—­it is,” he eagerly affirmed.  “Only,” he added, with a vaguely rueful modulation, and always with that amiable abruptness, as a man very much at his ease, while his blue eyes whimsically brightened, “only the blessed public never comes—­we’re so off the beaten path.  And I suppose one mustn’t expect a Scioccone”—­his voice swelled on the word, and he cast sidelong a scathing glance at his summoner—­“to cope with unprecedented situations.  Will you allow me to help you out?”

“Ah,” thought Lady Blanchemain, “Eton,” his tone and accent now nicely appraised by an experienced ear.  “Eton—­yes; and probably—­h’m?  Probably Balliol,” her experience led her further to surmise.  But what—­with her insatiable curiosity about people, she had of course immediately begun to wonder—­what was an Eton and Balliol man doing, apparently in a position of authority, at this remote Italian castle?

V

He helped her out, very gracefully, very gallantly; and under his guidance she made the tour of the vast building:  its greater court and lesser court; its cloisters, with their faded frescoes, and their marvellous outlook, northwards, upon the Alps; its immense rotunda, springing to the open dome, where the sky was like an inset plaque of turquoise; its “staircase of honour,” guarded, in an ascending file, by statues of men in armour; and then, on the piano nobile, its endless chain of big, empty, silent, splendid state apartments, with their pavements of gleaming marble, in many-coloured patterns, their painted and gilded ceilings, tapestried walls, carved wood and moulded stucco, their pictures, pictures, pictures, and their atmosphere of stately desolation, their memories of another age, their reminders of the power and pomp of people who had long been ghosts.

He was tall (with that insatiable curiosity of hers, she was of course continuously studying him), tall and broad-shouldered, but not a bit rigid or inflexible—­of a figure indeed conspicuously supple, suave in its quick movements, soft in its energetic lines, a figure that could with equal thoroughness be lazy in repose and vehement in action.  His yellow hair was thick and fine, and if it hadn’t been cropped so close would have curled a little.  His beard, in small crinkly spirals, did actually curl, and toward the edge its yellow burned to red.  And his blue eyes were so very very blue, and so very keen, and so very frank and pleasant—­“They are like sailors’ eyes,” thought Lady Blanchemain, who had a sentiment for sailors.  He carried his head well thrown back, as a man who was perfectly