Delmé strolled out half an hour before his brother's dinner hour, with the intention of paying a visit of ceremony to the Colonel of George's regiment. His house was not far distant. It had been the palazzo of one of the redoubted Knights of St. John; and the massive gate at which Sir Henry knocked for admittance, seemed an earnest, that the family, who had owned the mansion, had been a powerful and important one. The door was opened, and the servant informed Delmé, that Colonel Vavasour was on the terrace. The court yard through which they passed was extensive; and a spring "Of living water from its centre rose, Whose bubbling did a genial softness fling." Ascending a lofty marble staircase, along which were placed a few bronzed urns, Delmé crossed a suite of apartments--thrown open in the Italian mode--and passing through a glass door, found himself on a wide stone terrace, edged by pillars. Immediately beneath this, was an orange grove, whose odours perfumed the air. Colonel Vavasour was employed in reading a German treatise on light infantry tactics. He received Sir Henry with great cordiality, and proposed adjourning to the library. Delmé was pleased to observe, for it corresponded with what he had heard of the man; that, with the exception of the chef d'oeuvres of the English and German poets, the Colonel's library, which was an extensive one, almost wholly consisted of such books as immediately related to military subjects, or might be able to bear on some branch of science connected with military warfare. Pagan, and his follower Vauban, and the more matured treatises of Cormontaigne, were backed by the works of that boast of the Low Countries, Coehorn; and by the ingenious theories, as yet _but_ theories, of Napoleon's minister of war, Carnot.