best of it--and us--with such sweet grace. Only now and
then--as in the instance of a flattened hat--may a cry escape them. And
even then----

But a truce to reality! Let us return to Di Sorno.

This individual does not become enamoured of Gwendolen, as the crude
novel reader might anticipate. He answers her "coldly," and his eye
rests the while on her "tirewoman, the sweet Margot." Then come scenes
of jealousy and love, outside a castle with heavily mullioned windows.
The sweet Margot, though she turns out to be the daughter of a bankrupt
prince, has one characteristic of your servant all the world over--she
spends all her time looking out of the window. Di Sorno tells her of his
love on the evening of the bull-fight, and she cheerfully promises to
"learn to love him," and therafter he spends all his days and nights
"spurring his fiery steed down the road" that leads by the castle
containing the young scholar. It becomes a habit with him--in all, he
does it seventeen times in three chapters. Then, "ere it is too late,"
he implores Margot to fly.

Gwendolen, after a fiery scene with Margot, in which she calls her a
"petty minion,"--pretty language for a young gentlewoman,--"sweeps with
unutterable scorn from the room," never, to the reader's huge
astonishment, to appear in the story again, and Margot flies with Di
Sorno to Grenada, where the Inquisition, consisting apparently of a
single monk with a "blazing eye," becomes extremely machinatory. A
certain Countess di Morno, who intends to marry Di Sorno, and who has
been calling into the story in a casual kind of way since the romance
began, now comes prominently forward. She has denounced Margot for
heresy, and at a masked ball the Inquisition, disguised in a yellow
domino, succeeds in separating the young couple, and in carrying off
"the sweet Margot" to a convent.

"Di Sorno, half distraught, flung himself into a cab and drove to all
the hotels in Grenada" (he overlooked the police station), and, failing
to find Margot, becomes mad. He goes about ejaculating "Mad, mad!" than
which nothing could be more eloquent of his complete mental inversion.
In his paroxysms the Countess di Morno persuades him to "lead her to the
altar," but on the way (with a certain indelicacy they go to church in
the same conveyance) she lets slip a little secret. So Di Sorno jumps
out of the carriage, "hurling the crowd apart," and, "flourishing his
drawn sword," "clamoured at the gate of t