h you in
all your desires and aspirations.

I am yours with all my heart, with all my body and soul.

FRANCESCA.

I say nothing now about the immediate future, but I hope
it will please your highness to visit your most worthy
clerical relations in this cathedral city before long. I
shall say nothing to any of your clerical relations as
to my prospects in life until I shall have received your
sanction for doing so. But the sooner I do receive it the
better for my peace of mind.

Sir Francis was upon the whole delighted with the letter, and the
more delighted as he now read it for the third time. "There is such
an air of truth in every word of it." It was thus that he spoke to
himself about the letter as he sucked in the flattery. It was thus
that Miss Altifiorla had intended that he should receive it. She knew
herself too well to suspect that her flattery should fail. Not a word
of it failed. In nothing was he more gratified than in her allusions
to his matrimonial efforts with Miss Holt. She had assured him that
he would have finally conquered that strong-minded young woman.
But she had at the same time told him of the extreme tenderness of
his heart. He absolutely believed her when she whispered to him
her secret,--that she had envied Cecilia her lot when Cecilia was
supposed to be the happy bride. He quite understood those allusions
to his own pleasures and her assurance that she would never interfere
with him. There was just a doubt whether a thing so easily got
could be worth the keeping. But then he remembered his cousin and
determined to be a man of his word.

CHAPTER XX.

THE SECRET ESCAPES.

"All right. See you soon. Ever yours, F. G." Such was the entire
response which Miss Altifiorla received from her now declared lover.
Sir Francis had told himself that he hated the bother of writing
love-letters. But in truth there was with him also an idea that it
might be as well that he should not commit himself to declarations
that were in their nature very strong. It was not that he absolutely
thought of any possible future event in which his letters might be
used against him, but there was present to him a feeling that the
least said might be the soonest mended.

Miss Altifiorla when she received the above scrawl was quite
satisfied with it. She, too, was cautious in her nature, but not
quite so clever as her lover. She did, indeed, feel that she had now
caught her f