of thought that scorned to
worry him, and was not disposed to meet strangers; and so, with a brief
gesture of good-by to Twining, he turned into a path and disappeared.

Twining looked after him for a second or two, and then slapping his
legs, he muttered, pleasantly, "What fun!" and took the road towards the
house.

CHAPTER II. HOW TWO "FINE LADIES" PASS THE MORNING.

In a room of moderate size, whose furniture was partly composed of
bygone finery and some articles of modern comfort--a kind of compromise
between a Royal residence and a Hydropathic establishment--sat two
ladies at an open window, which looked out upon a small terrace above
the lake. The view before them could scarcely have been surpassed in
Europe. Enclosed, as in a frame, between the snow-clad Alps and the
wooded mountains of the Brianca, lay the lake, its shores one succession
of beautiful villas, whose gardens descended to the very water. Although
the sun was high, the great mountains threw the shadows half way across
the lake; and in the dim depth of shade, tower and crag, battlement and
precipice, were strangely intermixed, giving to the picture a mysterious
grandeur that contrasted strongly with the bright reality of the
opposite shore, where fruit and flowers, gay tapestries from casements,
and floating banners, added colour to the scene.

Large white-sailed boats stole peacefully along, loaded, half-mast high,
with water-melons and garden stores; the golden produce glittering in
the sun, and glowing in the scarcely rippled water beneath them, while
the low chant of the boatmen floated softly and lazily through the
air--meet sounds in a scene where all seemed steeped in a voluptuous
repose.

The two ladies whom we have mentioned were not impassioned spectators of
the scene. Whenever their eyes ranged over it, no new brilliancy awoke
in them, no higher colour tinged their cheek. One was somewhat advanced
in life, but with many traces of beauty, and an air which denoted a
lifelong habit of homage and deference.

There was that in her easy, lounging attitude, and the splendour of
her dress, which seemed to intimate that Lady Lackington would still
be graceful, and even extravagant, though there were none to admire the
grace or be dazzled by the costliness. Her companion, though several
years younger, looked, from the effects of delicate health and a
suffering disposition, almost of her own age. She, too, was handsome;
but it was a beaut