sound of a
rich alto voice singing very sweetly to a mandoline some soothing or
religious melody. The servant pulled aside a heavy curtain and I found
myself in my brother's room. An Italian youth sat on a stool near the
door, and it was he who had been singing. At a few words from John,
addressed to him in his own language, he set down his mandoline and left
the room, pulling to the curtain and shutting a door behind it.

The room looked directly on to the sea: the villa was, in fact, built
upon rocks at the foot of which the waves lapped. Through two folding
windows which opened on to a balcony the early light of the summer
morning streamed in with a rosy flush. My brother sat on a low couch
or sofa, propped up against a heap of pillows, with a rug of brilliant
colours flung across his feet and legs. He held out his arms to me, and
I ran to him; but even in so brief an interval I had perceived that he
was terribly weak and wasted.

All my memories of his past faults had vanished and were dead in that
sad aspect of his worn features, and in the conviction which I felt,
even from the first moment, that he had but little time longer to remain
with us. I knelt by him on the floor, and with my arms round his neck,
embraced him tenderly, not finding any place for words, but only sobbing
in great anguish. Neither of us spoke, and my weariness from long travel
and the strangeness of the situation caused me to feel that paralysing
sensation of doubt as to the reality of the scene, and even of my own
existence, which all, I believe, have experienced at times of severe
mental tension. That I, a plain English girl, should be kneeling here
beside my brother in the Italian dawn; that I should read, as I
believed, on his young face the unmistakable image and superscription
of death; and reflect that within so few months he had married, had
wrecked his home, that my poor Constance was no more;--these things
seemed so unrealisable that for a minute I felt that it must all be a
nightmare, that I should immediately wake with the fresh salt air of
the Channel blowing through my bedroom window at Worth, and find I had
been dreaming. But it was not so; the light of day grew stronger and
brighter, and even in my sorrow the panorama of the most beautiful spot
on earth, the Bay of Naples, with Vesuvius lying on the far side, as
seen then from these windows, stamped itself for ever on my mind. It was
unreal as a scene in some brilliant drama