d one another on the spot; yet for the
life of me I could not tell why, save that the woman of the tiger's
glance had a red edge to her heavy eyelids, and no eyelashes that I
could see--which things are not the marks of a good woman, as I take it.
Yet there was no real cause for the bitter and sudden dislike, for, as
it chanced, she came but little into our adventures. For youth, for the
sake of change, turns as readily away from evil as from good.

So eager was I to be down and out of doors, that I had hardly time to
make disposition of my goods in the room which had been reserved for me.
I threw open the casement. I hung half out of the window, and satisfied
myself with looking upon the still, calm blue of Lago d'Orta beneath,
flecked with heavy-bodied craft with deep yellow sails. My heart all the
while was crying out hungrily, "At last! at last!"

The precipices of hills, coloured like amethysts, fronted us, where the
southern Alps threw themselves downwards to the lake-shore. Half-a-dozen
hotels with white walls and green blinds clung about the outside of the
little town, and specially about the baths, which ever since the time of
the Romans had given the place its reputation. Few English people went
there, but many Italians, some Austrians, especially women--German men,
and cosmopolitan Russians, to whom all outside their native country was
a Fatherland.

"Come," said Henry as soon as we had become a little familiar, "let us
go to the baths."

Entering a low stone door, we ran up a flight of steps and found
ourselves in a circular building of ancient marble. It was to me the
strangest sight. We looked down on a great number of people up to their
necks in a kind of thick, coffee-coloured fluid, which steamed and gave
off strange odours. Men and women were there, old and young. All were
clad in full suits of light material, and comported themselves towards
each other as in a drawing-room. The sight of so many heads all bobbing
about on the coffee-coloured mud, like a hundred John the Baptists on
one large charger, was to me exceedingly diverting.

Little tables were floating about on the muddy water, and some pairs in
quiet corners played chess and even cards. But there was a constant
circulation among the throng. Introductions were effected in form, save
that no one shook hands, at least above the water; only the detached
heads bowed ceremoniously. It was a new canto of the _Inferno_--the
condemned playing dul