he could not
understand why he did so, Madame Neroni understood it well enough.

She had been gentle and kind to him and had encouraged his staying.
Therefore he stayed on. She pressed his hand when he first greeted
her; she made him remain near her and whispered to him little
nothings. And then her eye, brilliant and bright, now mirthful,
now melancholy, and invincible in either way! What man with warm
feelings, blood unchilled, and a heart not guarded by a triple steel
of experience could have withstood those eyes! The lady, it is true,
intended to do him no mortal injury; she merely chose to inhale a
slight breath of incense before she handed the casket over to another.
Whether Mrs. Bold would willingly have spared even so much is another
question.

And then came Mr. Slope. All the world now knew that Mr. Slope was a
candidate for the deanery and that he was generally considered to be
the favourite. Mr. Slope, therefore, walked rather largely upon the
earth. He gave to himself a portly air, such as might become a dean,
spoke but little to other clergymen, and shunned the bishop as much as
possible. How the meagre little prebendary, and the burly chancellor,
and all the minor canons and vicars choral, ay, and all the
choristers, too, cowered and shook and walked about with long faces
when they read or heard of that article in "The Jupiter." Now were
coming the days when nothing would avail to keep the impure spirit
from the cathedral pulpit. That pulpit would indeed be his own.
Precentors, vicars, and choristers might hang up their harps on the
willows. Ichabod! Ichabod! The glory of their house was departing from
them.

Mr. Slope, great as he was with embryo grandeur, still came to see
the signora. Indeed, he could not keep himself away. He dreamed of
that soft hand which he had kissed so often, and of that imperial brow
which his lips had once pressed; and he then dreamed also of further
favours.

And Mr. Thorne was there also. It was the first visit he had ever
paid to the signora, and he made it not without due preparation. Mr.
Thorne was a gentleman usually precise in his dress and prone to make
the most of himself in an unpretending way. The grey hairs in his
whiskers were eliminated perhaps once a month; those on his head were
softened by a mixture which we will not call a dye--it was only a
wash. His tailor lived in St. James's Street, and his bootmaker at
the corner of that street and Piccadilly. He wa