noon
When the rest of the household were in deep sleep , Randal stood long at his open window , looking over the dreary , comfortless scene , -- the moon gleaming from skies half-autumnal , half-wintry , upon squalid decay , through the ragged fissures of the firs ; and when he lay down to rest , his sleep was feverish , and troubled by turbulent dreams . However , he was up early , and with an unwonted colour in his cheeks , which his sister ascribed to the country air . After breakfast , he took his way towards Hazeldean , mounted upon a tolerable , horse , which he borrowed of a neighbouring farmer who occasionally hunted . Before noon , the garden and ter race of the Casino came in sight . He reined in his horse , and by the little fountain at which Leonard had been wont to eat his radishes and con his book , he saw Riccabocca seated under the shade of the red umbrella . And by the Italian 's side stood a form that a Greek of old might have deemed the Naiad of the Fount ; for in its youthful beauty there was something so full of poetry , something at once so sweet and so stately , that it spoke to the imagination while it charmed the sense . Randal dismounted , tied his horse to the gate , and , walking down a trellised alley , came suddenly to the spot .