Early on the next morning Hugh started alone for Casalunga, having first, however, seen Mrs Trevelyan.  He took out with him certain little things for the sick man’s table as to which, however, he was cautioned to say not a word to the sick man himself.  And it was arranged that he should endeavour to fix a day for Trevelyan’s return to England.  That was to be the one object in view.  ‘If we could get him to England,’ she said, ’he and I would, at any rate, be together, and gradually he would be taught to submit himself to advice.’  Before ten in the morning, Stanbury was walking up the hill to the house, and wondering at the dreary, hot, hopeless desolation of the spot.  It seemed to him that no one could live alone in such a place, in such weather, without being driven to madness.  The soil was parched and dusty, as though no drop of rain had fallen there for months.  The lizards, glancing in and out of the broken walls, added to the appearance of heat.  The vegetation itself was of a faded yellowish green, as though the glare of the sun had taken the fresh colour out of it.  There was a noise of grasshoppers and a hum of flies in the air, hardly audible, but all giving evidence of the heat.  Not a human voice was to be heard, nor the sound of a human foot, and there was no shelter; but the sun blazed down full upon everything.  He took off his hat, and rubbed his head with his handkerchief as he struck the door with his stick.  Oh God, to what misery had a little folly brought two human beings who had had every blessing that the world could give within their reach!

In a few minutes he was conducted through the house, and found Trevelyan seated in a chair under the verandah which looked down upon the olive trees.  He did not even get up from his seat, but put out his left hand and welcomed his old friend.  ‘Stanbury,’ he said, ’I am glad to see you for auld lang syne’s sake.  When I found out this retreat, I did not mean to have friends round me here.  I wanted to try what solitude was and, by heaven, I’ve tried it!’ He was dressed in a bright Italian dressing-gown, or woollen paletot—­Italian, as having been bought in Italy, though, doubtless, it had come from France—­and on his feet he had green worked slippers, and on his head a brocaded cap.  He had made but little other preparation for his friend in the way of dressing.  His long dishevelled hair came down over his neck, and his beard covered his face.  Beneath his dressing-gown he had on a night-shirt and drawers, and was as dirty in appearance as he was gaudy in colours.’sit down and let us two moralise,’ he said.  ’I spend my life here doing nothing, nothing, nothing; while ’you cudgel your brain from day to day to mislead the British public.  Which of us two is taking the nearest road to the devil?’

Stanbury seated himself in a second arm-chair, which there was there in the verandah, and looked as carefully as he dared to do at his friend.  There could be no mistake as to the restless gleam of that eye.  And then the affected air of ease, and the would-be cynicism, and the pretence of false motives, all told the same story.  ’They used to tell us,’ said Stanbury, ‘that idleness is the root of all evil.’