y over the wills
of others?

Nevertheless, as the rose of evening burned on the craggy mountain face
beyond Bellaggio, retreating upward, step by step, till the last
glorious summit had died into the cool and already starlit blues of
night, Julie, held, as it were, by a reluctant and half-jealous
fascination, sat dreaming on the hill-side, not now of Warkworth, not of
the ambitions of the mind, or society, but simply of the goings and
comings, the aspects and sayings of a man in whose eyes she had once
read the deepest and sternest things of the soul--a condemnation and an
anguish above and beyond himself.

* * * * *

Dr. Meredith arrived in due time, a jaded Londoner athirst for idleness
and fresh air. The Duchess and Julie carried him hither and thither
about the lake in the four-oar boat which had been hired for the
Duchess's pleasure. Here, enthroned between the two ladies, he passed
luxurious hours, and his talk of politics, persons, and books brought
just that stimulus to Julie's intelligence and spirits for which the
Duchess had been secretly longing.

A first faint color returned to Julie's cheeks. She began to talk again;
to resume certain correspondences; to show herself once more--at any
rate intermittently--the affectionate, sympathetic, and
beguiling friend.

As for Meredith, he knew little, but he suspected a good deal. There
were certain features in her illness and convalescence which suggested
to him a mental cause; and if there were such a cause, it must, of
course, spring from her relations to Warkworth.

The name of that young officer was never mentioned. Once or twice
Meredith was tempted to introduce it. It rankled in his mind that Julie
had never been frank with him, freely as he had poured his affection at
her feet. But a moment of languor or of pallor disarmed him.

"She is better," he said to the Duchess one day, abruptly. "Her mind is
full of activity. But why, at times, does she still look so
miserable--like a person without hope or future?"

The Duchess looked pensive. They were sitting in the corner of one of
the villa's terraced walks, amid a scented wilderness of flowers. Above
them was a canopy of purple and yellow--rose and wistaria; while through
the arches of the pergola which ran along the walk gleamed all those
various blues which make the spell of Como--the blue and white of the
clouds, the purple of the mountains, the azure of the lake.

"