Let us now return to some of the actors in our drama who for a while
back have been playing out their parts behind the scenes. The Heathcote
family, consisting of Sir William and his ward, May Leslie, Mrs. Morris
and her late husband's friend, Captain Holmes, were domesticated in a
sumptuous residence near the "Pincian," but neither going out into the
world nor themselves receiving visitors. Sir William's health, much
broken and uncertain as it was, formed the excuse for this reclusion;
but the real reason was the fact, speedily ascertained by the Captain,
and as speedily conveyed to his daughter, that "Society" had already
decided against them, and voted the English family at the Palazzo Balbi
as disfranchised.

Very curious and very subtle things are the passively understood decrees
of those who in each city of Europe call themselves the "World." The
delicate shades by which recognition is separated from exclusion; the
fine tints, perceptible only to the eyes of fashion, by which certain
frailties are relieved from being classed with grave derelictions; the
enduring efficacy of the way in which the smell of the roses will
cling to the broken vase of virtue and rescue its fragments from
dishonor,--are all amongst the strangest and most curious secrets of our
civilization.

Were it not for a certain uniformity in the observances, one might be
disposed to stigmatize as capricious the severity occasionally displayed
here, while a merciful lenity was exhibited there; but a closer
examination will show that some fine discriminating sense is ever at
work, capable of distinguishing between genteel vice and the wickedness
that forgets conventionalities. As in law, so in morals, no man need
criminate himself, but he who does so by an inadvertence is lost. Now
the Heathcotes were rich, and yet lived secluded. The world wanted not
another count in the indictment against them. A hundred stories were
circulated about them. They had come to place the "girl" in a convent
Old Sir William had squandered away all her fortune, and the scheme
now was to induce her to turn Catholic and take the veil. "The old
fool"--the world is complimentary on these occasions--was going to marry
that widow, whom he had picked up at Leamington or Ems or Baden-Baden.
If the Captain had not kept the Hell in the Circus, he was the very
double of the man who had it. At all events, it was better not to have
him in the Club; and so the banker, who was to have