Temistocle had exceedingly sharp eyes, and Temistocle had an exceedingly smooth tongue; he was understood among the servants to have made economies, and his tastes were somewhat luxurious. He found Sorrento hot and dull, and he cast about for something refreshing and amusing.
To take sea-baths had always been his chiefest ambition. It sounded well to be able to say he had taken a course of sea-bathing. But the thing was by no means easy at Sorrento. He could not bathe from his master's landing, and it was a long distance to go round by the lanes to reach another descent. At last, however, he discovered that he could climb over the little point of rocks at the foot of the Carantoni villa, and reach a small cove, where, in complete seclusion, he might enjoy himself as he pleased. Accordingly, when he had finished serving the midday breakfast he used to make a practice of going down to bathe. In his little cove he hid his clothes carefully among the rocks and crept into the water under the deep shadow of the overhanging cliff. He could not swim a stroke, but he could sit just so that the water came up to his chin, and his round black bullet head lay on the surface like a floating football, scarcely visible to any one passing outside in the sun. From this position it amused Temistocle to watch the boats and the fishermen for an hour or two, enjoying the idea that they never dreamed of his presence.
It chanced often, as he sat in the water, that Julius, in his outlandish costume, paddled his old boat past Temistocle's retreat; and the sharp eyes of the Roman servant were not long in discovering that the fisherman was no fisherman at all. It was the easier to recognise Batiscombe, as the man saw him when his beard was only a few days old. From that day Temistocle watched his opportunity to descend when the boat with the green oars had just passed, and would be out of the way for some time.
There was never the smallest doubt in his mind of Batiscombe's intention in thus disguising himself. The incident of the parcel, which he had carefully opened and examined, Batiscombe's sudden departure, and Leonora's simultaneous indisposition, all combined in his mind into one harmonious whole, from which he proposed to himself to extract at least a reasonable amount of money.