Cashel Byron's Profession

To so mistake a gentleman exercising himself in the open air on a

nineteenth-century afternoon would, under ordinary circumstances,

imply incredible ignorance either of men or statues. But the

circumstances in Miss Carew's case were not ordinary; for the man

was clad in a jersey and knee-breeches of white material, and his

bare arms shone like those of a gladiator. His broad pectoral

muscles, in their white covering, were like slabs of marble. Even

his hair, short, crisp, and curly, seemed like burnished bronze in

the evening light. It came into Lydia's mind that she had disturbed

an antique god in his sylvan haunt. The fancy was only momentary;

for she perceived that there was a third person present; a man

impossible to associate with classic divinity. He looked like a well

to do groom, and was contemplating his companion much as a groom

might contemplate an exceptionally fine horse. He was the first to

see Lydia; and his expression as he did so plainly showed that he

regarded her as a most unwelcome intruder. The statue-man, following

his sinister look, saw her too, but with different feelings; for his

lips parted, his color rose, and he stared at her with undisguised

admiration and wonder. Lydia's first impulse was to turn and fly;

her next, to apologize for her presence. Finally she went away

quietly through the trees.

The moment she was out of their sight she increased her pace almost

to a run. The day was too warm for rapid movement, and she soon

stopped and listened. There were the usual woodland sounds; leaves

rustling, grasshoppers chirping, and birds singing; but not a human

voice or footstep. She began to think that the god-like figure was

only the Hermes of Praxiteles, suggested to her by Goethe's

classical Sabbat, and changed by a day-dream into the semblance of a

living reality. The groom must have been one of those incongruities

characteristic of dreams--probably a reminiscence of Lucian's

statement that the tenant of the Warren Lodge had a single male

attendant. It was impossible that this glorious vision of manly

strength and beauty could be substantially a student broken down by

excessive study. That irrational glow of delight, too, was one of

the absurdities of dreamland; otherwise she should have been ashamed

of it.

Lydia made her way back to the castle in some alarm as to the state

of her nerves, but dwelling on her vision with a pleasure that she

would not have ventured to indulge had it concerned a creature of

flesh and blood. Once or twice it recurred to her so vividly that

she asked herself whether it could have been real. But a little

reasoning convinced her that it must have been an hallucination.