ambition could confer, now blessed with the tranquil joys
of some secluded existence. Alas! he was beyond the reach of either
fortune. The last of the Stuarts lay still and stark on the cold earth,
his blue eyes staring without a blink at the strong sun.

When some peasants passed on the following day they found Marietta
seated beside the dead body, the cold hand clasped within both her own,
and her eyes riveted upon the features; her mind was gone, and, save a
few broken, indistinct mutterings, she never spoke again.

As for Kelly, none ever could trace him. Some allege that he dashed over
the precipice and was killed; others aver that he sailed that same
night from St. Stephano for America, where he was afterwards seen and
recognised by many.

The little cypress tree in the mountains which once marked the grave of
the last of the Stuarts has long since withered.

THE END

APPENDIX

NOTE I

There is a fragment of a letter from Sir Conway Seymour to Horace
Walpole, written from Rome, where the writer had gone for reasons of
health, and in which the passing news and gossip of the day are narrated
in all the careless freedom of friendly confidence. Much, by far the
greater part, of the epistle is filled up by artistic discussion about
pictures and statues, with little histories of the frauds and rogueries
to which connoisseurship was exposed; there is also a sprinkling of
scandal, a light and flippant sketch of Roman moralities, which really
might have been written in our own day; some passing allusions to
political events there are also; and lastly, there comes the part which
more peculiarly concerns my story. After a little flourish of trumpets
about his own social success, and the cordial intimacy with which he was
admitted into the best houses of Rome, he says, 'Atterbury's letters of
course opened many a door that would have been closed against me as
an Englishman, and gave me facilities rarely extended to one of our
country. To this happy circumstance am I indebted for a scene which I
can never cease to remember, as one of the strangest of my life. You are
aware that though at the great levees of the cardinals large crowds are
assembled, many presenting themselves who have no personal acquaintance
with the host, at the smaller receptions an exclusiveness prevails
unknown in any other land. To such an excess has this been carried, that
to certain houses, such as the Abbezi and the Piombino, few ou