But now in the breath of the evening breeze, setting inland from the Atlantic, Lorraine was roving for the last time in the grounds of Monte Argento. At three in the morning he must set forth, with horses provided by his host, on his journey to head-quarters. The Count was known as a patriotic, wise, and wealthy noble, both of whose sons were fighting bravely in the Spanish army; and through his influence Lorraine had been left to hospitality instead of hospitals, which in truth had long been overworked. But Major Clumps had returned to his duty long ago, with a very sore heart, when he found from the Donna Camilla that “she liked him very much indeed, but could never induce herself to love him.” With the sharp eye of jealousy, that brave Major spied in Hilary the cause of this, and could not be brought to set down his name any more in his letters homeward; or at any rate, not for a very long time. Lorraine, in the calm of this summer evening, with the heat-clouds moving eastward, and the ripple of refreshment softly wooing the burdened air, came to a little bower, or rather a natural cove of rock and leaf, wherein (as he knew) the two fair sisters loved to watch the eventide weaving hill and glen with shadow, before the rapid twilight waned. There was something here that often brought his native Southdowns to his mind, though the foliage was so different. Instead of the rich deep gloss of the beech, the silvery stir of the aspen-tree, and the feathery droop of the graceful birch, here was the round monotony of the olive and the lemon-tree, the sombre depth of the ilex, and the rugged lines of the cork-tree, relieved, it is true, just here and there by the symmetry of the silver fir, and the elegant fan of the palm. But what struck Lorraine, and always irked him under these southern trees and skies, was the way in which the foliage cut its outline over sharply; there was none of that hovering softness, and sweetly fluctuating margin, by which a tree inspires affection as well as admiration. Unluckily now Lorraine had neither affection nor admiration left for the innocent beauty of nature’s works. His passion for Claudia was become an overwhelming and noxious power--a power that crushed for the time and scattered all his better elements. He had ceased to be light-hearted, and to make the best of everything, to love the smiles of children, and to catch a little joke and return it. He had even ceased to talk to himself, as if his conscience had let him know that he was not fit to be talked to. All the waking hours he passed, in the absence of his charmer, were devoted to the study of Spanish; and he began to despise his own English tongue. “There is no melody in it, no rhythm, no grand sonorous majesty,” he used to complain; “it is like its owners, harsh, uncouth, and countrified.” After this, what can any one do but pity him for his state of mind?