bterranean
imagery, and laughed faintly, saying that after the fifteenth--on which
night his wife insisted upon going to the Opera at Milan to hear a new
singer and old friend--he should try a week at the Baths of Bormio, and
only drop from the mountains when a proper temperature reigned, he being
something of an invalid.

'And, uncle, will you be in Milan on the fifteenth?' said the lady; 'and
Wilfrid, too?'

'Wilfrid will reach Milan as soon as you do, and I shall undoubtedly be
there on the fifteenth,' said the General.

'I cannot possibly express to you how beautiful I think your army
looks,' said the lady.

'Fine men, General Pierson, very fine men. I never saw such
marching--equal to our Guards,' her husband remarked.

The lady named her Milanese hotel as the General waved his plumes,
nodded, and rode off.

Before the carriage had started, Barto Rizzo dashed up to it; and 'Dear
good English lady,' he addressed her, 'I am the brother of Luigi, who
carries letters for you in Milan--little Luigi!--and I have a mother
dying in Milan; and here I am in Verona, ill, and can't get to her, poor
soul! Will you allow me that I may sit up behind as quiet as a mouse,
and be near one of the lovely English ladies who are so kind to
unfortunate persons, and never deaf to the name of charity? It's my
mother who is dying, poor soul!'

The lady consulted her husband's face, which presented the total blank
of one who refused to be responsible for an opinion hostile to the
claims of charity, while it was impossible for him to fall in with
foreign habits of familiarity, and accede to extraordinary petitions.
Barto sprang up. 'I shall be your courier, dear lady,' he said, and
commenced his professional career in her service by shouting to the
vetturino to drive on. Wilfrid met them as he was trotting down from
the Porta del Palio, and to him his sister confided her new trouble in
having a strange man attached to her, who might be anything. 'We don't
know the man,' said her husband; and Adela pleaded for him: 'Don't speak
to him harshly, pray, Wilfrid; he says he has a mother dying in Milan.'
Barto kept his head down on his arms and groaned; Adela gave a doleful
little grimace. 'Oh, take the poor beggar,' said Wilfrid; and sang out
to him in Italian: 'Who are you--what are you, my fine fellow?' Barto
groaned louder, and replied in Swiss-French from a smothering depth: 'A
poor man, and the gracious lady's servant till we reach Mi