much obliged for
my help, but I twigged it in a moment. He wanted me gone, so off I
skedaddled.

"Well, back I went to the inn, and began to make a few cautious
inquiries about the lady of the Villa Fiorlessa, for that was the
name of the house where I had left Mr. M----. I could not get on at
all at first, not understanding a word of the blessed lingo, but by
good luck I tumbled across an artist chap who turned out a good
sort, and offered to interpret for me. So we had the landlord in,
and I ordered a bottle of his best wine--nasty greasy stuff it
was--and we went at it hammer and tongs. Pretty soon I had found
out everything I wanted to.

"Nearly twenty years ago the lady--Mrs. Martival she was
called--had come to the Villa Fiorlessa with her husband and one
little boy. They were, it seems, one of the worst-matched couples
that could be imagined. Mr. Martival was a gloomy, severe man, who
hated going out, and worked at some sort of writing day and night.
His wife, on the other hand, who was a Frenchwoman, was
passionately fond of travel, and change, and gaiety. Her life was
consequently very like a prison, and it is stated, too, that
besides denying her every whim and forcing her to live in a manner
she utterly disliked, her husband ill-treated her shamefully. Well,
she made a few friends here and went to see them pretty often, and
just at that time an English milord--you can guess who he was--came
here to see the statue, and met Mrs. Martival, whom he seems to
have known before her marriage. The exact particulars are not
known, but it is supposed that Mrs. Martival would have been
married to this young Englishman, Sir Geoffrey Kynaston, but for
some deep scheming on the part of Mr. Martival. Anyhow, there was a
desperate quarrel between Mr. and Mrs. Martival, when she charged
him with duplicity before this marriage, and he forbade her to meet
Sir Geoffrey Kynaston again. Quite properly she refused to obey
him, and they met often, although every one seems quite sure that
at that time they met only as friends. Mr. Martival, however,
appears to have thought otherwise, for one night, after what they
call their carnival dance here, which every one in the neighborhood
had attended, Mr. Martival had the brutality to close his doors
agains