hing to do with it at all."

"But what a place to go to! What nice person, too, do you meet in a
hotel?"

"Nice or nasty, as I have told you several times before, is not the
point. Lilia has insulted our family, and she shall suffer for it. And
when you speak against hotels, I think you forget that I met your father
at Chamounix. You can contribute nothing, dear, at present, and I think
you had better hold your tongue. I am going to the kitchen, to speak
about the range."

She spoke just too much, and the cook said that if she could not give
satisfaction--she had better leave. A small thing at hand is greater
than a great thing remote, and Lilia, misconducting herself upon a
mountain in Central Italy, was immediately hidden. Mrs. Herriton flew to
a registry office, failed; flew to another, failed again; came home,
was told by the housemaid that things seemed so unsettled that she had
better leave as well; had tea, wrote six letters, was interrupted by
cook and housemaid, both weeping, asking her pardon, and imploring to
be taken back. In the flush of victory the door-bell rang, and there was
the telegram: "Lilia engaged to Italian nobility. Writing. Abbott."

"No answer," said Mrs. Herriton. "Get down Mr. Philip's Gladstone from
the attic."

She would not allow herself to be frightened by the unknown. Indeed
she knew a little now. The man was not an Italian noble, otherwise the
telegram would have said so. It must have been written by Lilia. None
but she would have been guilty of the fatuous vulgarity of "Italian
nobility." She recalled phrases of this morning's letter: "We love this
place--Caroline is sweeter than ever, and busy sketching--Italians full
of simplicity and charm." And the remark of Baedeker, "The inhabitants
are still noted for their agreeable manners," had a baleful meaning now.
If Mrs. Herriton had no imagination, she had intuition, a more useful
quality, and the picture she made to herself of Lilia's FIANCE did not
prove altogether wrong.

So Philip was received with the news that he must start in half an hour
for Monteriano. He was in a painful position. For three years he had
sung the praises of the Italians, but he had never contemplated having
one as a relative. He tried to soften the thing down to his mother, but
in his heart of hearts he agreed with her when she said, "The man may
be a duke or he may be an organ-grinder. That is not the point. If Lilia
marries him she insults the memory o