go to Florence, go wherever you like,
and study very hard, and make very good pictures, and come back
again, and we shall all be very glad to see you. You have very great
talents--these sketches are really capital."

"Is not he very clever, mamma?" said kind Lady Anne, eagerly. Clive felt
the pathetic mood coming on again, and an immense desire to hug Lady
Anne in his arms, and to kiss her. How grateful are we--how touched a
frank and generous heart is for a kind word extended to us in our pain!
The pressure of a tender hand nerves a man for an operation, and cheers
him for the dreadful interview with the surgeon.

That cool old operator, who had taken Mr. Clive's case in hand, now
produced her shining knife, and executed the first cut with perfect
neatness and precision. "We are come here, as I suppose you know, Mr.
Newcome, upon family matters, and I frankly tell you that I think, for
your own sake, you would be much better away. I wrote my daughter a
great scolding when I heard that you were in this place."

"But it was by the merest chance, mamma, indeed it was," cries Lady
Anne.

"Of course, by the merest chance, and by the merest chance I heard of
it too. A little bird came and told me at Kissingen. You have no more
sense, Anne, than a goose. I have told you so a hundred times. Lady Anne
requested you to stay, and I, my good young friend, request you to go
away."

"I needed no request," said Clive. "My going, Lady Kew, is my own act. I
was going without requiring any guide to show me to the door."

"No doubt you were, and my arrival is the signal for Mr. Newcome's bon
jour. I am Bogey, and I frighten everybody away. By the scene which
you witnessed yesterday, my good young friend, and all that painful
esclandre on the promenade, you must see how absurd, and dangerous, and
wicked--yes, wicked it is for parents to allow intimacies to spring up
between young people, which can only lead to disgrace and unhappiness.
Lady Dorking was another good-natured goose. I had not arrived yesterday
ten minutes, when my maid came running in to tell me of what had
occurred on the promenade; and, tired as I was, I went that instant
to Jane Dorking and passed the evening with her, and that poor little
creature to whom Captain Belsize behaved so cruelly. She does not care a
fig for him--not one fig. Her childish inclination is passed away these
two years, whilst Mr. Jack was performing his feats in prison; and if
the wretch fl