what my elder niece has told me. I have not seen Miss Rowley
since she left you. I am quite sure she has behaved with discretion."

"Indeed she has, Mrs. Outhouse."

"The fact is my nieces are in grief and trouble, and this is no time
or place for love-making. I am sorry to be uncivil, but I must ask
you not to come here any more."

"I will stay away from this house, certainly, if you bid me."

"I am very sorry; but I must bid you. Sir Marmaduke will be home in
the spring, and if you have anything to say to him of course you can
see him."

Then Hugh Stanbury took his leave of Mrs. Outhouse; but as he went
home, again on the knifeboard of an omnibus, he smoked the pipe of
triumph rather than the pipe of contemplation.

CHAPTER XL.

"C. G."

The Miss Spaldings were met at the station at Florence by their
uncle, the American Minister, by their cousin, the American Secretary
of Legation, and by three or four other dear friends and relations,
who were there to welcome the newcomers to sunny Italy. Mr. Glascock,
therefore, who ten minutes since had been, and had felt himself to
be, quite indispensable to their comfort, suddenly became as though
he were nothing and nobody. Who is there that has not felt these
sudden disruptions to the intimacies and friendships of a long
journey? He bowed to them, and they to him, and then they were
whirled away in their grandeur. He put himself into a small, open
hackney-carriage, and had himself driven to the York Hotel, feeling
himself to be deserted and desolate. The two Miss Spaldings were
the daughters of a very respectable lawyer at Boston, whereas Mr.
Glascock was heir to a peerage, to an enormous fortune, and to one of
the finest places in England. But he thought nothing of this at the
time. As he went he was meditating which young woman was the most
attractive, Nora Rowley or Caroline Spalding. He had no doubt but
that Nora was the prettier, the pleasanter in manner, the better
dressed, the more engaging in all that concerned the outer woman;
but he thought that he had never met any lady who talked better than
Caroline Spalding. And what was Nora Rowley's beauty to him? Had she
not told him that she was the property of some one else; or, for the
matter of that, what was Miss Spalding to him? They had parted, and
he was going on to Naples in two days. He had said some half-defined
word as to calling at the American Embassy, but it had not been taken
up by either of