the very least. Perhaps he would have been
unreasonable if it had done so; for his wife, in spite of all her
faults, was tenderly attached to him, and never loved him better than
when he asserted his authority over her and her possessions.

Mr. and Mrs. Luttrell had not been at their pretty white villa for more
than two months when a second son was born to them. He was baptized
almost immediately by an English clergyman then passing through the
place, and received the name of Brian. He was a delicate-looking baby,
but seemed likely to live and do well. Mrs. Luttrell's recovery was
unusually rapid; the soft Italian air suited her constitution, and she
declared her intention of nursing the child herself.

Edward Luttrell was in high spirits. He had been decidedly nervous
before the event took place, but now that it was safely over he was like
a boy in his joyous sense of security. He romped with his little son, he
talked _patois_ with the inhabitants of the neighbouring village of San
Stefano, he gossiped with the monks of the Benedictine foundation, whose
settlement occupied a delightful site on the hillside, and no
premonition of coming evil disturbed his heart. He thought himself the
most fortunate of men. He adored his wife; he worshipped the baby. His
whole heart was bound up in his handsome little Dick, who, at five years
old, was as nearly the image of his father as a child could be. What had
he left to wish for?

There had been a good deal of fever at San Stefano throughout the
summer. When the little Brian was barely six weeks old, it became only
too evident that Mrs. Luttrell was sickening of some illness--probably
the same fever that had caused so much mortality in the village. The
baby was hastily taken away from her, and a nurse provided. This nurse
was a healthy young woman with very thick, black eyebrows and a bright
colour; handsome, perhaps, but not prepossessing. She was the wife of a
gardener employed at the villa, and had been recommended by one of the
Fathers at the monastery--a certain Padre Cristoforo, who seemed to know
the history of every man, woman and child in San Stefano. She was the
mother of twins, but this was a fact which the Luttrells did not know.

This woman, Vincenza Vasari by name, was at first domiciled in the villa
itself with her charge; but as more dangerous symptoms declared
themselves in Mrs. Luttrell's case, it was thought better that she
should take the baby to her own home