t she would prefer not to have Nora with her. She was at that
time living in lodgings at Siena and had her boy there also. She saw
her husband every other day; but nevertheless,--according to her
statements,--her visits to Casalunga were made in opposition to his
wishes. He had even expressed a desire that she should leave Siena
and return to England. He had once gone so far as to say that if she
would do so, he would follow her. But she clearly did not believe
him, and in all her letters spoke of him as one whom she could not
regard as being under the guidance of reason. She had taken her
child with her once or twice to the house, and on the first occasion
Trevelyan had made much of his son, had wept over him, and professed
that in losing him he had lost his only treasure; but after that he
had not noticed the boy, and latterly she had gone alone. She thought
that perhaps her visits cheered him, breaking the intensity of his
solitude; but he never expressed himself gratified by them, never
asked her to remain at the house, never returned with her into Siena,
and continually spoke of her return to England as a step which must
be taken soon,--and the sooner the better. He intended to follow her,
he said; and she explained very fully how manifest was his wish that
she should go, by the temptation to do so which he thought that he
held out by this promise. He had spoken, on every occasion of her
presence with him, of Sir Marmaduke's attempt to prove him to be a
madman; but declared that he was afraid of no one in England, and
would face all the lawyers in Chancery Lane and all the doctors
in Savile Row. Nevertheless, so said Mrs. Trevelyan, he would
undoubtedly remain at Casalunga till after Sir Marmaduke should have
sailed. He was not so mad but that he knew that no one else would be
so keen to take steps against him as would Sir Marmaduke. As for his
health, her account of him was very sad. "He seemed," she said, "to
be withering away." His hand was mere skin and bone. His hair and
beard so covered his thin long cheeks, that there was nothing left
of his face but his bright, large, melancholy eyes. His legs had
become so frail and weak that they would hardly bear his weight as he
walked; and his clothes, though he had taken a fancy to throw aside
all that he had brought with him from England, hung so loose about
him that they seemed as though they would fall from him. Once she had
ventured to send out to him from Siena a