Hugo went abroad that summer with Guy and George. Anthony Cowper
joined them in the Tyrol, and they walked down into Italy. They
visited Verona and Bologna, and then the Umbrian towns. Hugo
became interested in the early Umbrian painters. He came back
very full of them. He had a copy of one, a very primitive Byzantine-looking
Madonna, pale gold and white and grey, which he hung up in his
room. That was the first break in his regime of no pictures at
all.
We were all at Yearsly at the end of September. Mollie and I
had been in Ireland. We went by ourselves to the West Coast,
and bathed and walked, and came back to Yearsly in September.
Guy had to go back to London to his law work soon after, and
Hugo went with him for a bit. He saw Paulina in London. Mollie
and I knew that; so did Cousin Delia. I wished sometimes I could
have talked to him about Paulina quite naturally, as we should
have talked once, but things had got different with him and me.
We were not close and harmonious as we used to be, and it was
that that I minded more than anything else.