roar, and you become aware, between the hills that rise gloomy and
almost sheer beside you, of a great solitude: a solitude that is
intensified rather than diminished by the sight of some
lonely--infinitely lonely--grange, perched far aloft, at a height that
seems out of reach of the world. What possible manner of human beings,
you wonder, can inhabit there, and what possible dreary manner of
existence can they lead? But even in the most solitary places you are
welcomed and sped on by a chorus of bird-songs. The hillsides resound
with bird-songs continuously for the whole seven miles,--and
continuously, at this season, for the whole four-and-twenty hours.
Blackbirds, thrushes, blackcaps, goldfinches, chaffinches, sing from the
first peep of dawn till the last trace of daylight has died out, and
then the nightingales begin and keep it up till dawn again. And
everywhere the soft air is aromatic with a faint scent of rosemary, for
rosemary grows everywhere under the trees. And everywhere you have the
purity and brilliancy and yet restraint of colour, and the crisp economy
of line, which give the Italian landscape its look of having been
designed by a conscious artist.

In and through his enjoyment of all these pleasantnesses, John felt that
agreeable glow which he owed to his glimpse of the woman in the garden;
and when at last he reached the Hotel Victoria, and, having dressed,
found himself alone for a few moments with Lady Blanchemain, in the dim
and cool sitting-room where she awaited her guests, he hastened to let
her know that he shared her own opinion of the woman's charms.

"Your beauty decidedly _is_ a beauty," he declared. "I wish you could
have seen her as I saw her an hour ago, with a white sunshade, against a
background of ilexes. It's a thousand pities that painting should be a
forgotten art."