t in solitude up into the hills--that was Mrs.
Wilkins's--were anything but torpid really. Their minds were unusually
busy. Even at night their minds were busy, and the dreams they had
were clear, thin, quick things, entirely different from the heavy
dreams of home. There was that in the atmosphere of San Salvatore
which produced active-mindedness in all except the natives. They, as
before, whatever the beauty around them, whatever the prodigal seasons
did, remained immune from thoughts other than those they were
accustomed to. All their lives they had seen, year by year, the
amazing recurrent spectacle of April in the gardens, and custom had
made it invisible to them. They were as blind to it, as unconscious of
it, as Domenico's dog asleep in the sun.

The visitors could not be blind to it--it was too arresting after
London in a particularly wet and gloomy March. Suddenly to be
transported to that place where the air was so still that it held its
breath, where the light was so golden that the most ordinary things
were transfigured--to be transported into that delicate warmth, that
caressing fragrance, and to have the old grey castle as the setting,
and, in the distance, the serene clear hills of Perugini's backgrounds,
was an astonishing contrast. Even Lady Caroline, used all her life to
beauty, who had been everywhere and seen everything, felt the surprise
of it. It was, that year, a particularly wonderful spring, and of all
the months at San Salvatore April, if the weather was fine, was best.
May scorched and withered; March was restless, and could be hard and
cold in its brightness; but April came along softly like a blessing,
and if it were a fine April it was so beautiful that it was impossible
not to feel different, not to feel stirred and touched.

Mrs. Wilkins, we have seen, responded to it instantly. She, so
to speak, at once flung off all her garments and dived straight into
glory, unhesitatingly, with a cry of rapture.

Mrs. Arbuthnot was stirred and touched, but differently. She had
odd sensations--presently to be described.

Mrs. Fisher, being old, was of a closer, more impermeable
texture, and offered more resistance; but she too had odd sensations,
also in their place to be described.

Lady Caroline, already amply acquainted with beautiful houses and
climates, to whom they could not come quite with the same surprise, yet
was very nearly as quick to react as Mrs. Wilkins. The place had an