promise to make Florence better or pleasanter. They mix
badly with our population. It is as if you threw a spoonful
of 'sauerkraut' into your 'potage a la reine!' Besides, the
Italians are like the Chinese,----unchanged and
unchangeable,--and they detest the advent of all strangers
who would interfere with their own little, soft, sleepy, and
enervating code of wickedness.

"Pray send me three lines, just to say----Is it to be or
not to be? Rose, the tailor, is persecuting me about a
mocha-brown, for a wedding garment, which certainly would
harmonize well with the prevailing tints of my hair and
eyebrows, but I am too prudent a diplomatist to incur
'extraordinaires' till I be sure of 'my mission.' Therefore
write at once, for such is my confidence in your skill and
ability that I only wait your mandate to launch into kid
gloves and lacquered leather, quite regardless of expense.

"Yours, most devotedly,

"Albert JEKYL.

"I open this to say that Morlache was seen going to the
Moskora last night with two caskets of jewels. Will this
fact throw any light on the mysterious seclusion?"

These last two lines D'Esmonde read over several times; and then,
crashing the note in his hand, he threw it into the fire. Within an hour
after he was on his way to Florence.

CHAPTER XXIX. A SECRET AND A SNARE.

As we draw near to the end of our voyage, we feel all the difficulty of
collecting the scattered vessels of our convoy; and while signalizing
the "clippers" to shorten sail, we are calling on the heavy sailers to
crowd "all their canvas."

The main interest of our story would keep us beside Frank Dalton,
whose fate seemed daily to vacillate,----now threatening gloomily, now
rallying into all the brightness of hope. By slow and cautious journeys
the old Count proceeded to remove him to Vienna, where he expected soon
to-be joined by Kate. Leaving them, then, to pursue their road by steps
far too slow for our impatience, we hasten along with D'Esmonde, as,
with all the speed he could accomplish, he made for Florence.

Occasionally he tried to amuse himself and divert his thoughts by
conversing with Meekins, who accompanied him; but although the man's
shrewdness was above the common, and his knowledge of the world very
considerable, D'Esmonde quickly saw that a thick cloak of reserve
covered the real man on all occ