a!"

"Perfectly awful! She talked to me in a way that I have read about
in books, but which I did not before believe to be possible. Do you
mean that he is going to be married to that hideous old maid,--that
bell-clapper?"

"Oh, mamma, what slander! I think her so pretty."

"Pretty!"

"Very pretty. And, mamma, ought I not to be happy that he should
have been able to make himself so happy? It was quite, quite, quite
impossible that I should have been his wife. I have thought about it
ever so much, and I am so glad of it! I think she is just the girl
that is fit for him."

Lady Rowley took her candle and went to bed, professing to herself
that she could not understand it. But what did it signify? It was,
at any rate, certain now that the man had put himself out of Nora's
reach, and if he chose to marry a republican virago, with a red nose,
it could now make no difference to Nora. Lady Rowley almost felt
a touch of satisfaction in reflecting on the future misery of his
married life.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

CASALUNGA.

Sir Marmaduke had been told at the Florence post-office that he would
no doubt be able to hear tidings of Trevelyan, and to learn his
address, from the officials in the post-office at Siena. At Florence
he had been introduced to some gentleman who was certainly of
importance,--a superintendent who had clerks under him and who was a
big man. This person had been very courteous to him, and he had gone
to Siena thinking that he would find it easy to obtain Trevelyan's
address,--or to learn that there was no such person there. But at
Siena he and his courier together could obtain no information. They
rambled about the huge cathedral and the picturesque market-place
of that quaint old city for the whole day, and on the next morning
after breakfast they returned to Florence. They had learned nothing.
The young man at the post-office had simply protested that he knew
nothing of the name of Trevelyan. If letters should come addressed to
such a name, he would keep them till they were called for; but, to
the best of his knowledge, he had never seen or heard the name. At
the guard-house of the gendarmerie they could not, or would not, give
him any information, and Sir Marmaduke came back with an impression
that everybody at Siena was ignorant, idiotic, and brutal. Mrs.
Trevelyan was so dispirited as to be ill, and both Sir Marmaduke and
Lady Rowley were disposed to think that the world was all against
th