and little Walter Crowdie grew up with
an angel's voice, and other gifts which made him famous in his day. But
many things happened before that time came.

He could do no better than that. For a time he strove to earn money with
his pen in his own country. But the land was still trembling from the
convulsion of a great war, and there were many before him, and he was
little known. After a year had passed, he saw that he could not then
succeed, and very heavy at heart he set his face eastward again, to
toil at his old calling as a correspondent for a great London paper, to
earn bread for himself and for the one living being that he loved.

PART III.

_DONNA FRANCESCA CAMPODONICO._

CHAPTER XLI.

NOT long after this Dalrymple returned to Rome, after an absence of
several years. Family affairs had kept him in England and Scotland
during his daughter's married life with Reanda; and after she had left
the latter, it was natural that he should not wish to be in the same
city with her, considering the view he took of her actions. Then, after
he had learned from Griggs's brief note that she was dead, he felt that
he could not return at once, hard and unforgiving as he was. But at last
the power that attracted him was too strong to be resisted any longer,
and he yielded to it and came back.

He took up his abode in a hotel in the Piazza di Spagna, not far from
his old lodgings. Long as he had lived in Rome, he was a foreigner there
and liked the foreigners' quarter of the city. He intended once more to
get a lodging and a servant, and to live in his morose solitude as of
old, but on his first arrival he naturally went to the hotel. He did not
know whether Griggs were in Rome. Reanda was alive, and living at the
Palazzetto Borgia; for the two had exchanged letters twice a year,
written in the constrained tone of mutual civility which suited the
circumstances in which they were placed towards each other.

In Dalrymple's opinion, Reanda had been to blame to a certain extent, in
having maintained his intimacy with Francesca when he was aware that it
displeased his wife. At the same time, the burden of the fault was
undoubtedly the woman's, and her father felt in a measure responsible
for it. Whether he felt much more than that it would be hard to say. His
gloomy nature had spent itself in secret sorrow for his wife, with a
faithfulness of grief which might well atone for many shortcomings. It
is certain that he