s
face, and, to screen his features from the vulgar gaze of the crowd,
they suffered it to remain there.

Up the wide stairs and into a spacious _salon_ they now carried the
figure, whose drooping head and hanging limbs gave little signs of life.
They placed him on a sofa, and Traynor, with a ready hand, untied
the mask and removed it. "Merciful Heavens," cried he, "it's my Lord
himself!"

The youth bent down, gazed for a few seconds at the corpse-like face,
and fell fainting to the floor.

"My Lord Glencore himself!" said the Duke, who was himself an old and
attached friend.

"Hush! not a word," whispered Traynor; "he 's rallyin'--he 's comin' to;
don't utter a syllable."

Slowly and languidly the dying man raised his eyelids, and gazed at each
of those around him. From their faces he turned his gaze to the chamber,
viewing the walls and the ceiling all in turn; and then, in an accent
barely audible, he said, "Where am I?"

"Amongst friends, who love and will cherish you, dear Glencore," said
the Duke, affectionately.

"Ah, Brignolles, I remember you. And this,--who is this?"

"Traynor, my Lord,--Billy Traynor, that will never leave you while he
can serve you!"

"Whose tears are those upon my hand,--I feel them hot and burning," said
the sick man; and Billy stepped back, that the light should fall upon
the figure that knelt beside him.

"Don't cry, poor fellow," said Glencore; "it must be a hard world, or
you have many better and dearer friends than I could have ever been to
you. Who is this?"

Billy tried, but could not answer.

"Tell him, if you know who it is; see how wild and excited it has made
him," cried the Duke; for, stretching out both hands, Glencore had
caught the boy's face on either side, and continued to gaze on it, in
wild eagerness. "It' is--it is!" cried he, pressing it to his bosom, and
kissing the forehead over and over again.

"Whom does he fancy it? Whom does he suspect?"

"This is--look, Brignolles," cried the dying man, in a voice already
thick with a death-rattle,--"this is the seventh Lord Viscount Glencore.
I declare it. And now------"

He fell back, and never spoke more. A single shudder shook his feeble
frame, and he was dead.

We have had occasion once before in this veracious history to speak of
the polite oblivion Florentine society so well understands to throw over
the course of events which might cloud, even for a moment, the sunny
surface of its enjoyment. No pe