here's the whole of it. To be arraigned as a regicide, and
called the companion of this, that, or t' other creature, who was or
ought to have been guillotined, is too great a shock for your Anglican
respectability; and really I had fancied you were Italian enough to take
a different view of this."

Maitland leaned his head on his hand, and seemed to muse for some
minutes. "Do you know, Carlo," said he, at last, "I don't think I 'm
made for this sort of thing. This fraternizing with scoundrels--for
scoundrels they are--is a rude lesson. This waiting for the _mot
d'ordre_ from a set of fellows who work in the dark is not to my humor.
I had hoped for a fair stand-up fight, where the best man should win;
and what do we see before us? Not the cause of a throne defended by the
men who are loyal to their king, but a vast lottery, out of which any
adventurer is to draw the prize. So far as I can see it, we are to go
into a revolution to secure a monarchy."

Caffarelli leaned across the table and filled Maitland's glass to the
brim, and then replenished his own.

"_Caro mio_," said he, coaxingly, "don't brood and despond in this
fashion, but tell me about this charming Irish beauty. Is she a
brunette?"

"No; fair as a lily, but not like the blond damsels you have so often
seen, with a certain timidity of look that tells of weak and uncertain
purpose. She might by her air and beauty be a queen."

"And her name?"

"Alice--Alicia, some call it."

"Alice is better. And how came she to be a widow so very young? What is
her story?"

"I know nothing of it; how should I? I could tell nothing of my own,"
said Maitland, sternly.

"Rich as well as beautiful,--what a prize, Maitland! I can scarcely
imagine why you hesitate about securing it."

Maitland gave a scornful laugh, and with a voice of bitterness
said: "Certainly my pretensions are great. I have fortune--station--
family--name--and rank to offer her. Can you not remind me, Carlo, of
some other of my immense advantages?"

"I know this much," said the other, doggedly, "that I never saw you fail
in anything you ever attempted."

"I had the trick of success once," said Maitland, sorrowfully, "but I
seem to have lost it. But, after all, what would success do for me here,
but stamp me as an adventurer?"

"You did not argue in that fashion two years ago, when you were going to
marry a Spanish princess, and the half-sister of a queen."

"Well, I have never regretted that