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At about the time that the young Lord of Montferrat was sitting down belatedly to table with his tutor and his gentleman-in-waiting, a very bedraggled and chilled Bellarion, who for two hours had been standing immersed to the chin in water, his head amid the branches of the alder-bush, came cautiously forth at last. He ventured no farther, however, than the shallow tongue of land behind the marble pavilion, ready at the first alarm to plunge back into his watery concealment.
There he lay, shivering in the warm night, and taking stock of his plight, an exercise which considerably diminished him in his self-confidence and self-esteem.