l wounds in her
fair body, but their sighs went with the Tiber, the Arno, and the
Po, and their hands joined. Who has not wept for Italy? I see the
aspirations of a world arise for her, thick and frequent as the puffs of
smoke from cigars of Pannonian sentries!

So when Austin came Richard said he could not leave Lady Judith, Lady
Judith said she could not part with him. For his sake, mind! This
Richard verified. Perhaps he had reason to be grateful. The high road
of Folly may have led him from one that terminates worse. He is foolish,
God knows; but for my part I will not laugh at the hero because he has
not got his occasion. Meet him when he is, as it were, anointed by his
occasion, and he is no laughing matter.

Richard felt his safety in this which, to please the world, we must
term folly. Exhalation of vapours was a wholesome process to him, and
somebody who gave them shape and hue a beneficent Iris. He told Austin
plainly he could not leave her, and did not anticipate the day when he
could.

"Why can't you go to your wife, Richard?"

"For a reason you would be the first to approve, Austin."

He welcomed Austin with every show of manly tenderness, and sadness at
heart. Austin he had always associated with his Lucy in that Hesperian
palace of the West. Austin waited patiently. Lady Judith's old lord
played on all the baths in Nassau without evoking the tune of health.
Whithersoever he listed she changed her abode. So admirable a wife was
to be pardoned for espousing an old man. She was an enthusiast even in
her connubial duties. She had the brows of an enthusiast. With occasion
she might have been a Charlotte Corday. So let her also be shielded
from the ban of ridicule. Nonsense of enthusiasts is very different from
nonsense of ninnies. She was truly a high-minded person, of that order
who always do what they see to be right, and always have confidence in
their optics. She was not unworthy of a young man's admiration, if she
was unfit to be his guide. She resumed her ancient intimacy with Austin
easily, while she preserved her new footing with Richard. She and Austin
were not unlike, only Austin never dreamed, and had not married an old
lord.

The three were walking on the bridge at Limburg on the Lahn, where
the shadow of a stone bishop is thrown by the moonlight on the water
brawling over slabs of slate. A woman passed them bearing in her arms a
baby, whose mighty size drew their attention.

"What a woppe