nt eyes. Sentiment, which before he
had scoffed at a little, as became a sturdy young Briton but lately
escaped from public school and college, had suddenly become for him
something akin to a holy thing. He was almost a poet that night--he who
had scarcely read a line of what the world calls poetry since his school
days. There was a man whom he had hated all his life. Just then he began
to think of him without a particle of anger or resentment. If he could
have met him there, among those drooping, white-flowering shrubs, he
felt that he could have shaken his hand, have asked him heartily after
his health, and doubtless have fixed a day to dine with him. The world
was a capital place, and Palermo was on the threshold of heaven. His
big, boyish heart was full to over-flowing. Oh! it is a fine thing to be
in love!

From the present he began to think a little of the future. He was right
in the clouds, and he began to dream. At twenty-five years old
imagination is the master of the man; at forty the situations are
reversed; but in losing the upper hand imagination often loses its power
and freshness. Lord St. Maurice was in his twenty-sixth year, and he
began to dream. He was his own master, and he was rich. There was a fine
estate in Eastshire, a shooting lodge in Scotland, and a box in
Leicestershire. Which would Adrienne prefer? How delightful it would be
to take her to them in the proper seasons, and find out which one
pleased her most. When they reached England, after a cruise as far as
Cairo and back along the Mediterranean, July would be on the wane. It
was just the best time. They would go straight to Scotland and have a
few days alone upon those glorious moors before the shooting commenced.
He remembered, with a little laugh, the bachelor invitations which he
had given, and which must now be rescinded. Bother bachelor invitations!
Adrienne was sure to like Scotland. This southern land with its
profusion of flowers, its deep, intense coloring, and its softly-blowing
winds, was beautiful enough in its way, but the purple covered moors and
cloud-topped hills of Scotland had their own charm. Adrienne had never
seen heather; and his long, low cottage was set in a very sea of it. How
pleasant the evening would be, out on the balcony, with the red sun
sinking down behind Bathness Hill. Ah! how happy they would be. Life had
never seemed so fair a thing!

He was on the Marina by this time, elbowing his way among the people