ome?"

"Did you expect me sooner? Had you not agreed with Hampstead and your
father that I was not to come?"

"Never mind. You are here now. Poor papa, you know, is very ill.
Perhaps I may have to go down there. John is there now."

"Is he so ill as that?"

"John went last night. We do not quite know how ill he is. He does
not write, and we doubt whether we get at the truth. I was very
nearly going with him; and then, sir, you would not have seen me--at
all."

"Another month, another six months, another year, would have made no
difference in my assurance of your truth to me."

"That is a very pretty speech for you to make."

"Nor I think in yours for me."

"I am bound, of course, to be just as pretty as you are. But why
have you come now? You shouldn't have come when John had left me all
alone."

"I did not know that you were here alone."

"Or you would not have come, perhaps? But you should not have come.
Why did you not ask before you came?"

"Because I should have been refused. It would have been refused;
would it not?"

"Certainly it would."

"But as I wish to see you specially--"

"Why specially? I have wanted to see you always. Every day has been
a special want. It should have been so with you also had you been as
true as I am. There should have been no special times."

"But I am going--"

"Going! Where are you going? Not for always! You are leaving
Holloway, you mean, or the Post Office." Then he explained to her
that as far as he knew the journey would not be for long. He was not
leaving his office, but had permission to absent himself for a time,
so that he might travel with his mother as far as Milan. "Nay," said
he, laughing, "why I am to do so I do not in the least know. My
mother has some great Italian mystery of which she has never yet
revealed to me any of the circumstances. All I know is that I was
born in Italy."

"You an Italian?"

"I did not say that. There is an old saying that you need not be a
horse because you were born in a stable. Nor do I quite know that
I was born in Italy, though I feel sure of it. Of my father I have
never known anything,--except that he was certainly a bad husband to
my mother. There are circumstances which do make me almost sure that
I was born in Italy; but as my mother has been unwilling to talk to
me of my earliest days, I have never chosen to ask her. Now I shall
perhaps know it all."

Of what else passed between them the reader need learn n