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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76769 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+ORIOLE’S DAUGHTER
+
+
+
+
+_NEW LIBRARY NOVELS._
+
+
+THE HEAVENLY TWINS.
+
+      By Sarah Grand, Author of ‘Ideala,’ etc.
+      In 3 vols.
+    ‘Every page is rife with wit and wisdom.’
+        _Daily Telegraph._
+
+KITTY’S FATHER.
+
+      By Frank Barrett, Author of ‘The Admirable
+      Lady Biddy Fane,’ etc. In 3 vols.
+    ‘Mr. Barrett has the true gift of the story-teller.’
+        _Speaker._
+
+THE O’CONNORS OF BALLINAHINCH.
+
+      By Mrs. Hungerford, Author of ‘Molly Bawn,’
+      etc. In 1 vol. 6s.
+    ‘The humour of the book is delicious.’--_Daily Telegraph._
+
+AVENGED ON SOCIETY.
+
+      By H. F. Wood, Author of ‘The Englishman of
+      the Rue Cain,’ etc. In 1 vol. 6s.
+    ‘Powerfully written and deeply interesting.’
+        _Manchester Examiner._
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+                WM. HEINEMANN, 21, BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
+
+
+
+
+                           ORIOLE’S DAUGHTER
+
+                             _A NOVEL_
+
+                                   BY
+
+                           JESSIE FOTHERGILL
+
+                               AUTHOR OF
+        ‘THE FIRST VIOLIN,’ ‘A MARCH IN THE RANKS,’ ‘PROBATION,’
+                                  ETC.
+
+                            IN THREE VOLUMES
+                               VOL. III.
+
+                             [Illustration]
+
+                                 LONDON
+                           WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+                                  1893
+                        [_All rights reserved_]
+
+
+
+
+ORIOLE’S DAUGHTER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Before the end of June, Yewridge Hall had been taken by the Marchmonts
+for a year, and they were established in it, not without considerable
+noise and bustle, pomp and circumstance, all of which arose from
+Marchmont’s rather than from his wife’s inclinations. His stinginess,
+once so notorious, had yielded, or had been forced by circumstances
+to yield--at any rate, in the matter of outside appearances. Yewridge
+was a place requiring a large establishment, a staff of servants,
+plenty of carriages and horses, and much movement and opulence in its
+arrangements, to redeem it from the semblance, both inside and out,
+of some huge empty barrack, devoid of comfort or anything homelike.
+Perhaps it might have been considered quite excusable and justifiable
+had Marchmont decided to let it look as gloomy as might be, while he
+lived in the strict retirement called for by his state of health. He
+had, however, no such intention. Everything was arranged as though he
+had intended to keep open house, and Fulvia spoke of it to Minna and
+Signor Giuseppe during some of her frequent visits to the smaller house.
+
+‘He says people will come to call, and we must be ready to receive
+them,’ she said, smiling slightly, with that perfectly impersonal
+smile which baffled Minna completely. It was as impersonal as the
+smile one sees on the lips of archaic heads, Greek, Egyptian,
+Etruscan--though a great deal more beautiful--the smile which is
+the same on the faces of gods and goddesses, warriors in the last
+agony or in the height of conflict, nymphs in repose, allegoric
+figures--everything; a smile conveying no expression, no meaning, and
+no soul--impersonal. Such was the smile with which Fulvia always spoke
+of her husband, of his sayings and doings, and of everything connected
+with him.
+
+Minna looked at her as she said that Marchmont expected people to call.
+She was embarrassed to find an answer; at once vague and polite, to
+such a statement. Fulvia relieved her by continuing, in the same light
+and frivolous tone:
+
+‘The county, I suppose he means. You see, signora mia, I am getting
+quite learned in all your English superstitions. “The county.” I know
+that is the object of every well-regulated, pious, and aspiring mind
+in the country in England--to be “in” with the county. And he thinks
+the county will rally round him--round us. Did you ever hear of such a
+delusion? But I don’t undeceive him. What would be the use? It occupies
+his mind, to make plans and cheat himself in this matter. He makes
+plans as to what he will do when the county has returned from town,
+and called upon us, and we upon it. He has made me send for some new
+dresses.’
+
+She laughed lightly, not gaily.
+
+‘He will very soon find that he is not strong enough to stand it, if
+the county came round him ever so much,’ said Minna deprecatingly.
+
+Fulvia shrugged her shoulders.
+
+‘Of course he is weak, in a way. But he would die in the effort to take
+any place that was open to him, in the right sort of society. And if he
+is weak, I have to be very strong; of course I am strong, naturally,
+but, you know, this constant sitting up and these broken nights begin
+to tell, even upon me.’
+
+‘Do you not sleep?’ asked Signor Giuseppe abruptly.
+
+‘I could if I might,’ replied Fulvia carelessly. ‘At two-and-twenty one
+must be very ill indeed to have lost one’s power of sleeping. It isn’t
+that. You see, night is the worst time with him. He often has pain
+then, and he sleeps wretchedly. He often could not sleep for months
+without morphia. They are always calling me up in the middle of the
+night to go and talk to him or pacify him.’
+
+‘You ought not to go,’ said Minna. ‘How can you be well if you burn
+your candle at both ends in that way?’
+
+‘Gia! Well, what can I do?’ asked Fulvia carelessly. ‘I often sit up
+with him till about two in the morning, and then go; but sometimes, you
+know, I am really so tired, and perhaps have a hard day before me--not
+here, of course, but in other places where we have been--that I can’t
+do it. So I just tell the nurse what to do. She leaves his room for a
+few minutes, and then goes back again, and says Mrs. Marchmont begs
+him to excuse her, and she will come and see him first thing in the
+morning, before breakfast. That always makes him very angry, but he
+is helpless now. His anger comes to nothing. And of course the nurse
+hasn’t been to me at all. I have told her beforehand that I must have a
+whole night’s rest. One must, you know, sometimes. And on those nights
+when I know I shall not be disturbed, don’t I sleep! I make up for
+hours and hours of wakefulness then, and my maid can hardly get my eyes
+open in the morning.’
+
+‘Humph!’ snorted Signor Oriole, rising abruptly from his chair, and
+with a flash of his old rapid, irritable movement he left the room
+without a word to either of them.
+
+‘He doesn’t like what I said,’ observed Fulvia with a heightened
+colour. ‘He is just the same as ever, though he looks so different. It
+is wonderful that he should have settled down here,’ she added, as if
+somewhat glad to turn the subject of her discourse. ‘I would never have
+believed it if anyone had told me. You know, in the bad times when he
+was exiled from Italy, along with a lot of the others, and when he was
+travelling about, doing all kinds of odd things to keep himself alive,
+he was in Malta and Greece and Turkey and the Crimea and Switzerland,
+but he never came to England, as so many of his compatriots did. I
+have thought of it many a time. He is so thoroughly Southern in every
+thought and feeling and impulse, and yet here he is, in this English
+house, in this cold, Northern English country.’
+
+Minna laughed a little.
+
+‘Yes, it’s quite true,’ she said; ‘it is wonderful; and yet, you know,
+the English and Italians are so much alike--the Romans, at any rate, in
+some deep, far-reaching substratum of their characters or temperaments.
+I have often been struck with it. It is only on the outside that we
+are so different.’
+
+‘What does he do all day? What does he study now?’
+
+‘What he always loved and always managed to study in the midst of
+his greatest troubles: archæology, and history, and ancient art and
+antiquarian things--what he calls the history of the dust of Rome.’
+
+‘Rome,’ repeated Fulvia in a deep voice, all her lightness of tone
+and manner gone. She had clasped her hands round her knee. ‘Yes, he
+is Roman through and through: who could ever be anything else who had
+once been Roman? I also,’ she added dreamily, as she looked across
+the dazzling yellow green of the lawn in front of the house towards a
+wooded glade of the park, fringed by heavy trees of a deep shade of
+foliage--‘I also.’
+
+She heaved a profound sigh, sadness itself, deep and beyond the power
+of words to describe. Minna thrilled to it. It told her what she knew
+well enough of these two, the unacknowledged father and daughter, that
+despite all that might happen, though Rome should be full of enemies
+for them, and the rest of the world swarming with friends; though utter
+poverty, and obscurity, and unspeakable hardships might be their lot
+there, and ease and distinction and consideration might await them
+elsewhere, yet their hearts were there, in their own city. They were
+genuine Romans.
+
+They tolerated other places and people, they resigned themselves to
+endure them as best they might; but the true, unmistakable Roman spirit
+was in them--the exclusiveness which cares not for the stranger, but
+only, as it were, endures him on sufferance; the want of longing for
+any other life than that which they could lead within the walls of
+Aurelian; the haughty, yet not ill-natured, superb contempt for other
+towns, countries and peoples, which is, as it were, the hall-mark of
+your true Roman.
+
+Minna knew it perfectly well, and resented it not in the least. She
+knew the fascination of the place, and had many a time said to herself:
+‘If I were not an Englishwoman I would be a Roman; and if I were a
+Roman I should out-Roman all other Romans in my Romanness.’
+
+So she knew perfectly well what Fulvia’s utterance of the word meant,
+and she sympathized with her to her heart’s core.
+
+‘I suppose you have never had any communication with Rome since you
+left it?’ she asked seriously.
+
+Fulvia comprehended in the flash of an eye.
+
+‘You mean, with my mother?’ she said, in a cool, hard voice. ‘Oh,
+certainly not. I never shall--never, under any circumstances. There is
+one fatal obstacle to it.’
+
+‘One more than others?’
+
+‘Yes. I have always cared for the truth, and spoken the truth. Graf
+T----, a friend of ours at Vienna, told me it was the only obstacle in
+the way of my becoming an accomplished stateswoman. It is a sort of
+disease with me, you know, and I quite see how very much it is against
+me in many ways. I can never feel the same to people who tell lies as
+to those who tell the truth. The reason why I can be so much with you
+and Beppo now is because you always told me the truth. She lied to me.
+She told me I was to be happy. She told me lies about herself, about
+her situation, about Beppo. If she had been openly brutal about my
+marriage, and had told me the naked truth all the time; that she meant
+to have money and freedom and ease, and was going to sell me to get
+them, and that she did not care for my happiness or her own salvation,
+so that she had them, I could have forgiven her in the end, as things
+have turned out. As it is, I shall never forgive her. I shall never be
+able to--because she lied to me, and persisted in it, and went on lying
+to the end. I can never forgive those lies.’
+
+‘No. But that would not deter you from going to Rome again?’
+
+‘No.’ She glanced down at her wrist, on which was a narrow gold bangle,
+with a flat disc hanging from it, which bracelet she always wore.
+Suddenly she looked up and held out her hand and arm.
+
+‘Would you believe me capable of such sentimentality?’ she said.
+
+Minna examined the trinket, as she was evidently expected to do so. On
+the disc was engraved the very common device, in large thin letters one
+word above the other--_Roma_, _Amor_.
+
+Minna smiled at first. Her eyes, her heart smiled, and smiled with
+delight. She possessed some such baubles herself, and loved them,
+though she never wore them. She smiled, therefore, looked up, and met
+Fulvia’s eyes.
+
+The young woman still held out her hand and arm, steady and
+untrembling. She was not smiling. There was no alteration in the grave,
+firm line of her lips, in the straight sweep of her eyebrows, no
+deeper hue on her cheek or brow; but the light within her eyes and the
+expression which softened every line of her face startled Minna with
+a great shock. That was not a touch of girlish sentiment, that was not
+a bright mist of tender tears. No grief or regret, but an immense joy,
+lay behind that look. What had joy to do there?
+
+‘Did you buy it?’ she asked abruptly.
+
+‘Buy it!’ Fulvia laughed. ‘No; one does not buy trumpery things like
+that--at least, I don’t. Had I been buying, I would have got something
+more elegant, in better taste--more _recherchée_ in every respect.
+I did not buy it. It was given to me--bought off a second-hand dealer’s
+stall in the Campo dei Fiori, at the price that was asked for it, to
+the utter despair of the seller. I am sure that man will die with an
+unhealed wound in his heart, caused by the conviction that had he asked
+three times as much from the fool of a foreigner he could have got it.’
+
+She laughed again, and pushed the bangle further up her firm white
+wrist.
+
+Minna smiled constrainedly, wishing she did not feel that disagreeable
+little thrill run down her spine on hearing this avowal; wishing also
+that the scene in the picture-gallery, when she had met Fulvia and Hans
+Riemann, had not flashed with such swiftness into her mind.
+
+It was evening, towards half-past seven, and after the little pause
+which ensued upon her last words Fulvia said she must go or she would
+not be home again and dressed in time for dinner. They dined at eight,
+as Minna was aware. Marchmont insisted upon being wheeled into the
+great dining-room where the meal was set out in state, and where, at
+one end of the table, waited upon by his own servant, he made the kind
+of meal which he was permitted to have, while his wife, at the other
+end of the board, in _demie-toilette_, ate her dinner under the
+auspices of a butler and a footman of the gravest type.
+
+It was, as she had told Minna more than once, a ghastly entertainment;
+‘but,’ she always concluded, ‘it seems to afford him some kind of
+comfort or to gratify his love of display, or something, so I make no
+objection.’
+
+Minna, as a rule, dined somewhat earlier, but to-day she was expecting
+her brother, who could not arrive in time for her to dine before eight
+or after.
+
+‘I will go with you to the gate,’ she said, rising also; and they
+passed out of the room.
+
+‘Where has Signor Oriole gone, I wonder!’ speculated Fulvia.
+
+Minna had noticed several times of late, when he did not present
+himself some time during her visit, or appear about the time of her
+departure, she looked round as if she missed him, and generally asked
+where he was.
+
+‘He will, perhaps, be somewhere in the garden,’ she said, as they went
+along the hall towards the front-door.
+
+Just before they reached it was heard a loud crunching of the gravel
+and rumbling of wheels, and a waggonette drove up and stopped before
+the door, looking very big, and making a huge barrier before the low,
+old-fashioned entrance.
+
+‘Aunt Minna!’ cried a shrill, excited voice from the waggonette. ‘There
+they are; I met them on the road.’
+
+‘They!’ repeated Minna. ‘Is the child out of her senses?’
+
+She came to a dead stop, staring at the party in the waggonette. Then
+she bestowed one swift glance upon Fulvia, and hated herself for not
+being able to prevent herself from doing so. Fulvia’s face did not
+change; only she looked very grave and quiet.
+
+Rhoda had scrambled down from the vehicle in a state of high glee.
+Following her was a tall man with a pale face and a certain severity in
+his expression. This was Mr. Hamilton, whom everyone accused of being
+the reverse of severe, given to far too great a leniency in matters
+as to which society held certain unshakable traditional opinions. His
+grave face relaxed as his eyes fell upon Minna and upon the joyous
+figure of his young daughter. Rising from his seat, to get out after
+Mr. Hamilton, was Hans Riemann.
+
+After a moment’s silence Minna advanced. Fulvia remained somewhat in
+the background, gravely waiting. The brother and sister greeted each
+other. Then he said:
+
+‘My dear Minna, look here!’ He turned to where Hans Riemann stood in
+the doorway, half smiling, not in the least deprecatory, not in the
+least embarrassed. ‘Hans turned up at my place last night, not knowing
+I was coming here, and intending to pay me a visit. So, as I know you
+have plenty of room, I just brought him on, and hope it is all right.’
+
+It was not all right. Minna felt most distinctly that it was not all
+right; but, even had it been a great deal more wrong than it was, the
+appeal to her hospitality would have disarmed her. She smiled.
+
+‘Come in, Hans; there is room for you, of course,’ she said. She could
+not speak the words, ‘I am glad to see you,’ but she held out her
+hand, and said, ‘If you can transfer your affections from South to
+North with such rapidity it is very well. You know Mrs. Marchmont?’
+she added coldly, though she was far from feeling so. She was inwardly
+furious at not being able to pass it all lightly by, as if it had been
+nothing. Scarcely giving Hans time even to shake hands with Fulvia, she
+drew her brother forward, and said:
+
+‘Richard, you have often heard me speak of Mrs. Marchmont, whom I am
+lucky enough to have now as a neighbour, and she has heard of you from
+me many a time. I want you to know one another.’
+
+Mr. Hamilton’s calm, rather tired-looking eyes rested openly and
+scrutinizingly upon the young woman. He was older than Minna, and
+scarcely resembled her at all in appearance. His hair was more than
+grizzled; it had a distinct powdering of white in it. Yet the face was
+almost the face of a young man. All its lines, though thin, were not
+mean. He wore neither beard nor moustache. It was a curious and unusual
+face, and few there were who at first sight considered it an attractive
+one.
+
+‘Yes, I have heard of you,’ he said, not smiling at all, as he held out
+his hand. Fulvia put hers within it, but did not speak. This man’s face
+and eyes and voice troubled and somewhat repelled her.
+
+It was now the turn of Hans, who came forward with his calmly
+insouciant manner, offered his hand, and bowed low over hers. As he did
+so, the little gold bangle with its jangling disc, its ‘_Roma_,
+_Amor_,’ slipped down, almost over her hand. As he lifted his
+head their eyes met.
+
+‘You are quite established here, then?’ he asked.
+
+‘For the present, yes.’
+
+‘Ah! I shall hope, then, to see something of you.’
+
+‘We must see,’ said Fulvia quietly. She then turned towards Minna.
+
+‘Dear Mrs. Hastings, I must wait no longer. I will run to the Hall by a
+short path. Good-evening. A rivederci.’
+
+Without looking again at the two men, she walked quickly out, through
+the front-door and away.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+Scarcely had she left the garden of Minna’s house, and got into the
+grounds which strictly belonged to her own, than she saw Signor
+Giuseppe coming towards her, apparently returning from his walk or
+wherever he had gone when he left them so suddenly.
+
+‘You are going home?’ he asked, stopping.
+
+‘Yes; it is late. The brother and the cousin of Mrs. Hastings have
+arrived,’ said she, and, rapidly though she had been walking, she also
+paused. It was very rarely that they exchanged words when no one else
+was present.
+
+Signor Giuseppe seemed to forget that he also ought to be going in,
+that dinner--imperious dinner--would be ready immediately at the small
+house as well as at the great one. And Fulvia, though she knew full
+well that nothing so much exasperated her husband as waiting for this
+function, and though she made it her study not to cross him in things
+of that kind--Fulvia also betrayed no haste. Her face changed and
+grew softer. Signor Giuseppe was looking very earnestly, yea, even
+wistfully, at her. She did not return his glance. On the contrary, her
+eyes were downcast--it almost appeared as if she had not the courage to
+meet his gaze.
+
+‘I will go with you to the Hall, if I may,’ he said.
+
+‘It will give me the greatest pleasure if you will,’ was her low-voiced
+response, and they moved on. But there was no haste in her step now.
+Signor Oriole, though no weakling, was now an old man, and his griefs
+and troubles had added to the years which by nature were his. No doubt
+he would have walked quickly, and hastened, had she shown herself in
+a hurry. But she did not. She waited till she found out his pace, and
+then accommodated herself to it. She was silent, but still her eyes
+were downcast, and Fulvia Marchmont, in the flush of her womanhood and
+in all her glorious beauty, with that expression of greater softness
+relaxing its usual smiling, cold composure, was as lovely a thing as
+man or woman could wish to look upon, be the same father or mother,
+lover, husband or friend.
+
+‘You are glad to be here, near Mrs. Hastings?’ he asked her. They spoke
+Italian.
+
+‘As glad as I can be of anything,’ she replied in a low voice. ‘I can
+look forward to the summer now with peace, at any rate. And it is
+better to be here in this quiet English country place than in some
+German bath or French watering-place, or----’
+
+‘Or even some nook in Italian hills,’ he continued for her.
+
+‘Yes, the two first would be a weariness, with their endless monotony
+of fashions, and bands, and entertainments; and the last----’
+
+‘And the last--Frascati, for instance, or further afield: Olevano, or
+Subiaco, or Rocco di Papa. Olevano--would not Olevano Romano please you
+now?’
+
+Signor Giuseppe, though speaking quietly, had forgotten himself and
+his great self-restraint. He had forgotten the stately _voi_, and
+had called her ‘thee’ in a tone which seemed to stir some feeling at
+her inmost heart--who should say what feeling, what recollection of
+her childish days at Casa Dietrich, when she had hung on his arm, and
+teased him, and called him Beppo, and said ‘Cattivo!’ when he would
+not indulge her in some whim? She became very white, and looked at him
+speechlessly for a moment from a pair of wide-open, dry eyes, full of a
+pain that stabbed his own heart.
+
+‘Don’t!’ was all she said, but humbly, deprecatingly, not sharply.
+
+‘Carina, forgive me!’ he exclaimed in great distress, thereby making
+bad worse. He stopped again. ‘It is unwise; we had better not talk. I
+wish to spare your feelings, not to hurt them,’ he said quickly. ‘I
+will return now. Good-night.’
+
+He refrained from even holding out his hand. Fulvia, with a white face
+and a wan smile, bowed her head, returned his valediction almost in a
+whisper, then darted onwards at a rapid pace. Soon she turned a corner,
+and was hidden from his view by a great clump of immense evergreen
+trees.
+
+Signor Giuseppe turned back and went homewards. His head was sunk, his
+hands were clasped behind him, his walk was dejected.
+
+‘If I might go away while she is here--go away, and not see it all!’
+was the thought in his heart, which was filled to bursting with a great
+pain and a great anger.
+
+‘Coward!’ then he told himself. ‘In spite of her white face, and her
+grief at my stupid mistake, I know that she prefers me to be here. If
+she were asked, she would not have me go. Ah, poverina! I wonder if she
+thinks I do not know--a stupid old fellow, engrossed in his studies,
+who cannot understand a young human heart, and its pain and its woe and
+its peril. Can I not see that heart, and understand both its weakness
+and its strength? Do I not know that she has fronted the storm, and
+come through it strong and proud, entitled to mock at weaker ones?
+Poor Minna is always pained by what she thinks my child’s cynicism--a
+skin-deep cynicism. Altro! She is steeled to meet all misfortune with
+a smile, that superb smile which only they smile who have gone through
+the worst, and who know that all else which may befall them is but
+trivial. Grief and hatred and unhappiness will neither bend nor break
+her--she is used to them and despises them. But love, but worship, but
+adoration from one whom she too could love--ah!’
+
+He raised his head, and looked up into the deep-blue sky, with its
+rolling white clouds, and thought deeply, as if trying to recollect
+something. Then--
+
+‘Yes, I remember--a lesson lies before her when she could so well do
+with a respite. She is like my Rome, described by the historian from
+whom Minna long ago read me the description of its walls--a mighty city
+and a strong, defended on three sides by nature as well as art, but on
+the fourth, where there was “no river to embank, no cliff to scarp,”
+weak and vulnerable. Servius made it strong by artificial means--the
+city. And she too--per Dio! A mighty defence am I, and a virtuous
+example!’
+
+He laughed sarcastically at his own reflections as he entered the
+house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+Fulvia’s mocking amusement at her husband’s grandiose ideas as to
+the society they would presently be called upon to entertain was not
+altogether justified by the result. A good many people did come to call
+upon them--a good many more people than Minna had expected to do so; as
+for Fulvia, she had not expected anyone, except perhaps the parson of
+the parish, with whom a visit to them would be all in the day’s work.
+In spite of all her experience of the world in the last five years, she
+had overrated the repellant power of somewhat misty antecedents when
+backed by an anything but misty purse, suddenly appearing in the midst
+of a remote country district, where variety was not too frequent, and
+where curiosity was rampant. The clergyman did call, and it was known
+that Mrs. Hastings was on intimate terms with Mrs. Marchmont. Mrs.
+Marchmont’s beauty, like her husband’s riches, was a light which could
+not be hidden under a bushel; it burnt through it, and was evident to
+all who had the fortune to see her.
+
+Society was kind enough to a certain extent to glaze over the fact
+of Marchmont’s being a mere parvenu, and a disagreeable one. His
+illness and helplessness were much in his favour, especially as it was
+understood that he had no wish to cloister that beautiful young wife
+whose devotion and absolute propriety of conduct were understood to
+be exemplary. As the summer went on, invitations came, all of which
+he feverishly insisted upon her accepting. She was utterly averse to
+it, not, of course, from the motives attributed to her by society, but
+from sheer inner joylessness, emotional and moral starvation. She had
+been smitten to the heart when she had parted with her girlhood, and
+the wonderful strength which was hers was not the strength of joy and
+life, which initiates, enjoys, anticipates, but only that of repression
+and endurance. Whether she stayed at home or whether she went abroad
+was much the same to her. Each course was equally blank and barren and
+futile.
+
+But perhaps it was less troublesome to put on the fine clothes and go
+and mix with others, with ever the same glacial smile, than to refuse
+to do it, and submit to the querulous complaints and reproaches of
+her husband. Minna, who usually loved quietness, was quite willing to
+break through her habit to chaperon Fulvia, and she went out with her
+constantly. There was only one verdict as to Mrs. Marchmont. She was
+beautiful; she was clever; she was perfectly _comme il faut_; good
+style, quiet, self-possessed, no nonsense about her, ‘so much more like
+an Englishwoman than a foreigner,’ some discriminating critics said.
+But, then, she had been thrown so much amongst English people--she was
+so much with Mrs. Hastings--she had taken the stamp. The one fault that
+was found with her was that she was almost too quiet--was, at times,
+almost, if not quite, uninteresting.
+
+Minna heard these comments, of course, and never replied to them.
+Fulvia may have known more of them than was supposed. They were of
+about as much consequence to her as if they had never been uttered.
+
+Marchmont was feverishly eager to, as she euphoniously put it, ‘make
+some return for all this hospitality,’ and lawn-tennis parties were
+arranged, archery was revived, the biggest strawberries and the
+thickest cream that the county produced were freely dispensed, together
+with rivers of champagne-cup and claret-cup; dances of an impromptu
+nature sometimes followed these entertainments, at which some young
+people, at any rate, had a good time. Yewridge Hall had not been so gay
+or seen so much dissipation for many a year, but, then, for many a year
+it had not been inhabited by a millionaire.
+
+At all these entertainments the mistress of the house showed herself
+ever the same--calm, cool, and beautiful, polite to all, effusive to
+none. She was perfectly independent. She chose to distinguish one man
+beyond others by her preference for his company, and by permitting him
+to render her fifty little services and attentions which many another
+man would have performed with delight. She did it openly, in the light
+of day, in the face of all her guests and of her husband, on the rare
+occasions when he could be present at any of these gatherings. That
+man was Hans Riemann, who accepted the distinction accorded to him,
+or, rather, availed himself of it as a matter of course, without
+excitement, without showing either exultation or embarrassment. At
+first, some malicious tongues said it was odd. It went on, whether it
+was odd or not, and at last people ceased to talk about it.
+
+Hans Riemann had known Mrs. Marchmont in Rome long ago, when Minna
+Hastings had been her friend there; Marchmont himself had known him
+there. He always welcomed the rising painter with effusion. It was all
+right, not a doubt of it. The parties proceeded and gossip dropped.
+
+One evening Minna, her brother, and Hans were to dine alone at the
+Hall. Signor Giuseppe, who had never entered the house nor exchanged a
+word with Marchmont, was left at home with Rhoda Hamilton, who, as has
+been said, was a fast friend of his, finding a never-failing delight in
+his society. Rhoda revelled in the stories which Signor Oriole, when he
+was in a communicative humour, would tell her.
+
+She was intelligent and sensitive, with a nature at once strong and
+romantic, and for such a girl no more delightful companion could
+be imagined than the elderly Italian gentleman, with his stores of
+learning and knowledge and research, and with also the background of
+his own life, chequered and varied, from his early boyhood on his
+father’s estate amongst the Sicilian hills; all the strange games he
+used to play, all the wild adventures he knew of, with brigands and
+robbers, with peasants and gentry--tales of savage vendetta or romantic
+love, of curious hereditary customs appertaining to his house and
+family. Then, later, when he was a youth, the burning sense of wrong
+before the Italian risings against the hated foreign rule, the yoke
+of the Bourbon--this sense of wrong which ate into his soul and into
+the souls of other generous, hot-blooded lads like him; the secret
+societies into which they banded themselves, their thrilling adventures
+and escapes--not always escapes, either; their seizure by the minions
+of the foreign Government: there was a story of one whole month in a
+veritable dungeon which absolutely enthralled Rhoda.
+
+Then the utter renunciation of his entire inheritance in order to serve
+_la patria_; his services first in the Garibaldian army; the
+battles, the sorties, the fighting in the red shirt, the wounds, the
+hardships, the privations; his enrolment amongst regular troops, the
+ultimate triumph, the march into Rome through the breach by Porta Pia,
+the hoisting of the tricolour on Castel Sant’ Angelo and the Quirinal.
+Different bits of this long story he would tell her at different times,
+and of how he had been so very poor ‘after the battle was over,’ how
+for a time he had gained his living by cutting cameos till he had found
+shelter as a clerk for the foreign correspondence of Gismondi and
+Nephew.
+
+Rhoda listened, spell-bound, watching with fearsome delight for what
+she called the ‘gory passages,’ when Signor Giuseppe’s head was
+uplifted and his nostrils dilated, and his dark eyes flashed fire from
+under his shaggy, still black eyebrows.
+
+‘Oh, Aunt Minna, doesn’t he look terrible,’ she would whisper beneath
+her breath, with a delicious shudder, ‘when he tells of battles and
+wounds!’
+
+Then Signor Oriole would laugh sarcastically, and say:
+
+‘Ah, Rhoda, mia carina, you are like all the rest of your sex--so soft
+and gentle, and delighting so thoroughly in blood. I will wager that if
+the amphitheatre still existed, and the gladiators and the wild beasts
+were known to be particularly savage, you would flock there in crowds,
+even as in the days of Nero, and Caligula and Commodus. And some of
+the best seats would still be set apart for the Vestal Virgins, who in
+this case would be the daintiest and most high-born dames in society,
+and who would never fail to claim their privilege, any more than those
+pagan priestesses did--you are all alike, everyone exactly alike.’
+
+Rhoda would be uncomfortable and abashed at this ironical address,
+and would wriggle uneasily, till her old friend--her magician, as she
+called him--would go off on another tack, and, inspired by his own
+mention of the amphitheatre, would pour forth for her his stores of
+learning, the history of ancient times, and would make Rome live for
+her again. Rhoda did not know which kind of story she liked best. One
+day she said to him abruptly:
+
+‘You tell these things so well, I am sure you have told them before.
+You say we are all alike. Did you ever tell them to any other girl, and
+did she like them too?’
+
+‘Yes!’ he answered, with something like a start.
+
+‘She liked them?’
+
+‘Yes, very much.’
+
+‘Tell me, was she an English girl or an Italian girl?’
+
+‘An Italian girl--a Roman girl, carina.’
+
+‘And where is she now--that girl?’
+
+They were alone on this occasion. Rhoda looked earnestly into Signor
+Giuseppe’s face. A strange expression came over it.
+
+‘That girl,’ said he very gently, ‘is now dead.’
+
+‘Oh--h!’ breathed Rhoda, shocked at her own indiscretion. ‘I’m sorry I
+asked,’ she added softly.
+
+By way of answer he began to tell her another story.
+
+These two firm friends then were left at home, and Minna with her two
+men walked across the park to the Hall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+They were received by Fulvia alone.
+
+‘My husband is intensely disappointed,’ she said, ‘but he is not at
+all well to-day. Dr. Brownrigg was here this morning, and absolutely
+forbade his coming in to dinner. You will be kind enough to take me by
+myself.’
+
+They had all enough _savoir faire_ not to betray their great
+exultation at the announcement, and to say, without even a conscious
+look amongst them, that they were sorry Mr. Marchmont was suffering.
+
+The dinner was a charming one. The conversation never ceased, and
+Marchmont’s name was scarcely mentioned. When the meal was over--they
+had lingered over it--they all went out of the dining-room together. In
+the hall Fulvia said:
+
+‘If you want to smoke, do it now. I am going to ask Mrs. Hastings to do
+me a favour. Come with me,’ she added, turning to Minna. ‘I must just
+go and speak to him for a few moments before we go to the drawing-room.’
+
+Minna assented, and they went to Marchmont’s rooms.
+
+They found him in the midst of his luxuries--the softly shaded lights,
+the cunningly padded couches, the endless appliances for securing ease
+and comfort. He was already beginning to look very much flushed; his
+hard eyes were bright, and his twisted mouth looked more askew, more
+grotesquely sardonic than ever.
+
+When he saw Minna, he made an effort at something approaching
+politeness, but he looked at his wife with an irritated impatience
+which he did not attempt to conceal.
+
+‘What have you been doing?’ he asked snappishly. ‘Does it take over two
+hours for four people to eat their dinner? I thought you were never
+coming.’
+
+‘Have we been so long? We were enjoying ourselves, I suppose,’ said
+Fulvia, with a slight smile, as she approached his couch. ‘Che, che!
+Don’t excite yourself, or you will have a dreadfully bad night. You
+know you will.’
+
+She spoke lightly, as one would speak to a fretful child, but without
+any of the tenderness one would use to such a child. Her face was
+hard, and her eyes undisturbed.
+
+‘Go and stand a little way off,’ he told her, not heeding what she had
+said to him. ‘I want to see what you look like. What gown is that? How
+long have you had it? It’s a new one.’ He spoke excitedly.
+
+‘Indeed it is not. I have had it on several times. The flowers are
+different, that’s all.’
+
+‘A preposterous dress for the occasion,’ he said crossly, but his eyes
+devoured the figure that wore it, and the face that looked so coldly
+and quietly down upon him from a little distance away.
+
+‘That is very polite to Mrs. Hastings, who has done me the honour to
+come in evening dress,’ said Fulvia, and she pushed a chair forward for
+Minna. ‘Sit down here,’ she said to her, looking at her with, as Minna
+could not help thinking, an underlying feeling of some kind--hatred,
+or despair, or a boundless ennui, under the forced patience of her
+eyes--for they were patient, those eyes of Fulvia Marchmont, or, if
+it were not patience, it was death that was in them--the death of all
+susceptibility and sensibility.
+
+‘I meant no harm to Mrs. Hastings,’ said Marchmont with a kind of
+disgusted apology in his tone. Then, after a pause, when both the women
+were seated, he began:
+
+‘Fulvia, this doctor here isn’t up to anything. I ought to have been on
+my legs again long before now. Why don’t you hurry him up? I believe
+you are in league together, he and you, to keep me ill.’
+
+‘What a horridly uncomfortable feeling to have!’ said his wife dryly.
+‘Not a feeling I should like to have at all. I would much rather die
+at once than be always suspecting that the people about me were slowly
+killing me.’
+
+‘Die!’ he repeated angrily. ‘I don’t mean to die, I can tell you. I
+mean to get well again--of course I shall. Bless my soul! I’m only
+five-and-thirty now. The idea of a man of five-and-thirty being
+incurably ill! Ridiculous! But I need very thorough treatment, and he
+doesn’t give it to me. He does nothing to make me well.’
+
+‘No? What do you mean? What do you want doing?’
+
+‘I want to have him dismissed, and another sent for.’
+
+‘Another? They are not so plentiful here. You remember what the man in
+London said about you?’
+
+‘Of course--every word.’
+
+‘Well, has anything been neglected which he advised? You have the
+little book in which I wrote it all out. You can check off each thing,
+and judge for yourself whether or not his orders have been obeyed. He’s
+the first authority in the world on such matters, and you know it.’
+
+A kind of inarticulate growl or snarl was the response. Fulvia went on:
+
+‘If you mistrust Mr. Brownrigg to such an extent, you had better tell
+him so yourself--I shall not do it, for I think him most conscientious,
+and much cleverer than one would expect to find a country practitioner
+in an out-of-the-way place like this.’
+
+‘I have told him more than once,’ said Marchmont sulkily.
+
+‘You have? And what does he say to it? I should really like to know.’
+
+‘Sometimes he laughs. The last time he was quite angry because I said
+something about you. He said, “Come! none of that,” or something like
+it. It’s no good. They are either in love with you or afraid of you,
+all the lot of them. The next time I see a doctor I don’t intend you to
+come near till I’ve had it all out with him, and got to know his real
+opinion about me.’
+
+‘I am sure I shall be very glad to be away,’ replied Fulvia with icy
+indifference. ‘We have talked long enough about this, too. I didn’t
+bring Mrs. Hastings to have anything of this kind inflicted upon her.
+Do you know what we were talking about at dinner?’
+
+‘No--and don’t want to.’
+
+‘Very well; we’ll say good-evening, then. It is too great a penance for
+my visitor.--Come!’ She looked at Minna, and rose.
+
+Minna followed her example.
+
+‘Don’t go, Fulvia!’ cried her husband in a thin, piercing voice, which
+had a sound in it of fretful tears. ‘Can’t you understand what a man
+feels like, mewed up here all day, and not able to do anything that
+anyone else can?’
+
+‘Oh, it must be very unpleasant, I am sure,’ she replied with perfect
+tranquillity. ‘But that is no reason why other people should be made
+uncomfortable by your discomfort.--Come!’ She again turned to Minna,
+with a smile.
+
+‘You will come back again?’ he cried in a persistent, shrill voice.
+
+‘Oh, of course I shall come as usual,’ she replied.
+
+Minna shook hands with the poor little suspicious, fretful mummy of a
+creature, disliking him a degree less than she had ever done before.
+He was being punished so obviously and so severely.
+
+They left the room, and went back towards the drawing-room.
+
+‘A man!’ ejaculated Fulvia, half to herself, as she paused for a
+moment, and then gave a kind of laugh. ‘A man--già!’
+
+Minna made no remark beyond one to the effect that he really seemed
+very ill.
+
+‘Oh yes, he is very ill,’ replied Fulvia, shrugging her shoulders.
+
+They found Hans and Mr. Hamilton in the drawing-room waiting for them.
+They sat down in a group near one of the windows, and left the rest
+of the great cold-looking room to itself. The light grew dimmer and
+dimmer. A servant came with a lamp. Fulvia bade him place it on a table
+in the corner, and not to bring any more lights. It made a radiant
+soft yellow glow in the background, with its gold-silk shade. They
+talked in low voices about Italy, even about Rome. Hans’ eye roved
+round the walls as if in search of something.
+
+‘What are you looking for, as if you missed something?’ Fulvia asked
+him.
+
+‘There is hardly a trace here, if any, that you are a foreigner, and
+have lived abroad most of your time,’ he said, laughing. ‘I speak, of
+course, from an English point of view.’
+
+‘What a fine irony!’ observed Mr. Hamilton carelessly.
+
+Hans looked nettled.
+
+Fulvia said he was right.
+
+‘So far as this room goes, at any rate,’ she added. ‘But Mrs. Hastings
+knows that I have things upstairs, in my own sitting-room.’
+
+‘For example?’
+
+‘Oh,’ said Fulvia very gently, but with a change in her voice for all
+that, ‘two of Melozzo da Forli’s angels.’
+
+‘Those in the Sacristy dei Canonici, do you mean?’ asked Hans eagerly.
+
+‘Yes, the divinely sentimental one, and the one with a drum--a kind of
+drum; do you remember? I have other things, too. Some of those white
+angels which are in one of the chapels, a broken-down place belonging
+to S. Gregorio Magno. Do you remember those, too?’
+
+‘Do I remember?’ he again repeated. ‘Per Dio! do I remember?’
+
+‘I should never have seen those pictures but for Mrs. Hastings,’
+continued Fulvia. ‘I don’t think Roman girls as a rule know much of
+what there is all around them in their own city. Even Bep----’
+
+She stopped suddenly and crimsoned. There was a silence. Even Fulvia
+was embarrassed. Minna came to the rescue by asking Hans about his
+travels of last year.
+
+He related some of his adventures in out-of-the-way places, and said
+carelessly that he thought of going soon to the Caucasus, where there
+was magnificent scenery, and of there making a series of landscape and
+costume studies, bringing them home, and exhibiting them in London.
+
+‘Of course I should make them very realistic and very bizarre,’ he
+added; ‘that is the only road to name and fortune now. Of course, too,
+if I went, I should have to stay an awfully long time to accomplish
+what I want to do.’
+
+Another pause. Minna wondered if it was only her excited imagination
+which saw a leaden pallor overspread Fulvia’s face. It was Mr.
+Hamilton who at last asked, in a dry kind of voice:
+
+‘Should you go for pleasure exactly?’
+
+‘For pleasure and for art,’ replied Hans promptly. ‘For what else
+should I go?’
+
+‘There might be many reasons,’ was the reply, in a tone of profound
+indifference. Yet to this indifference there was, as it were, an edge
+which seemed in some way to pique or offend Hans. He rose suddenly from
+his chair, observing abruptly:
+
+‘I cannot tell what on earth you mean, Hamilton.’ Then he stood before
+the window which looked across the park. ‘From here,’ he observed, in a
+strangled kind of voice, ‘one can see the trees of your garden, Minna.’
+
+‘What a discovery! what a revelation to me!’ said she, laughing. ‘Have
+you only just found it out?’
+
+‘Doubt is cast upon everything that I say,’ exclaimed Hans, in a tone
+of annoyance. ‘Were you aware of those trees, Mrs. Marchmont?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Coming to the edge of the wood, one might signal, if necessary, to the
+Hall. Did you never find it unpleasant, Minna, when the Parkynsons were
+here?’
+
+‘Certainly not. The Parkynsons were well-behaved people, and I trust I
+am the same. Why should I have found it unpleasant?’
+
+After this exchange of civilities of a dubious kind, the conversation
+flagged. Though it was nearing the end of July, the light continued
+strong and clear in that Northern sky until a late hour. They did not
+stay till late--left, in fact, so early that it was still daylight
+out-of-doors, and Fulvia said she would walk with them part of the way.
+She took a light shawl over her arm, and they paced slowly along in
+the delicious summer evening. The air was filled with scents of flowers
+and hay; the thick trees stood motionless: their voices, if they raised
+them in the least, sounded echoing and clear.
+
+‘It is lovely,’ said Fulvia, with a full sigh as of one who passes
+suddenly from pain to ease. She looked up into the glory of the
+darkening sky. ‘It rests one only to feel it.’
+
+She was walking in advance with Minna and Richard Hamilton. The gravel
+drive was wide enough for half a dozen persons to walk abreast upon it,
+but Hans hung behind. As they drew near Minna’s domain, Fulvia said
+she must turn back. It was then that Hans stepped forward, saying in a
+matter-of-course tone:
+
+‘You will not go alone. I shall walk with you to the house.’
+
+‘As you like,’ replied Fulvia indifferently.
+
+She took leave of Minna and Mr. Hamilton, and turned. Hans was by her
+side.
+
+The brother and sister went on in silence for a little time, till at
+last Minna said, in a tone of vexation, deep though muffled:
+
+‘That was pretty strong, I must say. Richard, why did you not go back
+with them too?’
+
+‘Do you think they wanted me?’
+
+‘What does it matter whether they wanted you or not? I wish--oh, I wish
+so many things! You do not know how wild with vexation I was, when I
+saw Hans sitting beside you in the waggonette that evening! It was such
+impudence in him to come without an invitation!’
+
+‘He said you had invited him.’
+
+‘I never did. He invited himself. Of course I could not say no. From
+the very first I have mistrusted him. He was in love with her in Rome
+when she was a mere child, and----’
+
+Mr. Hamilton shrugged his shoulders.
+
+‘I don’t think you see the situation clearly,’ he said, in his
+indifferent way. ‘There is a situation, and it is one in which no
+outsider can do anything. For her,’ he added after a full stop, ‘except
+herself, of course. Whether she is strong or weak, it will prove.’
+
+‘She is strong,’ Minna asseverated, almost passionately. ‘She must be
+tremendously strong, or how could she have lived through all she has
+had to live through, and have come out of it so splendidly?’
+
+‘That’s one kind of strength--a purely negative kind, of which you
+women constantly possess so much. Her pride has helped her through
+that, and an obstinate determination not to be dragged down by her
+husband to his level. She has brains, so of course the suffering
+must have been much more acute than if she had been a mere block of
+wood. But people can so often be strong through every kind of cruelty
+and hardness, and yet collapse at the first word of affection or
+sympathy--especially that kind of sympathy, of one sex to the other.’
+
+‘Oh Richard! The first word!’
+
+‘I am saying nothing. I say, if she is to be helped out of this, it
+must be by her own strength.’
+
+‘I wish Hans were in the Caucasus now, and would stay there,’ she said,
+with a bitter, uneasy resentment.
+
+‘But he isn’t. And the Caucasus is a long way off. Here we are, at your
+house, and here is Signor Oriole walking about the garden.’
+
+Signor Giuseppe was pacing about a round sweep of gravel in front of
+the house, his hands clasped behind him, his head slightly bowed, his
+eyes fixed upon the marks left in the gravel by his own footsteps.
+
+He was so lost in thought that Minna had to speak his name before he
+noticed them.
+
+‘You have returned?’ he said, smiling; and then, looking round, his
+face suddenly became shadowed.
+
+‘Riemann?’ he asked. ‘Where is he?’
+
+‘Here at your service,’ replied Hans, just behind them, and Minna, at
+least, instantly began to be thoroughly ashamed of what she called her
+own unworthy suspicions. She spoke to Hans with a cordiality which was
+almost eager.
+
+They lingered a little out-of-doors, still enjoying the beauty of the
+night, and loath to leave it. Then the whole party went into the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+In spite of all the care bestowed upon him, and of his own unrelaxing
+efforts to fulfil his doctor’s promises that he should get well,
+Marchmont’s health did not improve. There was not, said the medical
+men, the least real danger to his life; the probability was that, as he
+grew more helpless, his hold on his life would grow stronger.
+
+‘In fact,’ said Mr. Brownrigg to Fulvia, in a private interview after
+Marchmont had had a very bad night, ‘there is no reason why he should
+not live to be an old man. He will have every care and consideration;
+he has no worries; yes, he will settle down into a permanent invalid,
+but not one to whose life there is any imminent danger.’
+
+‘Oh, yes, he will have every care and consideration,’ said Fulvia
+dreamily.
+
+She smiled as Mr. Brownrigg rose to take his leave.
+
+All the gaiety and visitors had been strictly forbidden. The
+guest-chambers were empty, the gardens and park untenanted. The house
+was more like the barrack of a regiment of dead soldiers than ever.
+
+As the days went on Marchmont grew more dissatisfied and restless,
+more exacting and more difficult to manage. His brain was not in the
+least touched by his illness; only his natural suspiciousness seemed to
+grow ever keener and sharper, and his curiosity and determination to
+know everything, down to the minutest detail, of what went on in the
+household, more boundless and ungovernable. As August progressed, the
+lives of those at the great house did not grow happier. Marchmont’s
+nurse, though endowed with quite as much patience as the rest of her
+kind, grew restive, and told Fulvia one day that as a rule she could
+stand any kind of patient by simply taking no notice of his ‘tantrums,’
+as she was pleased to call them; but that with Mr. Marchmont this was
+impossible, as he had a way with him more irritating and obnoxious than
+that of anyone whom she had ever nursed before.
+
+His man also, a valuable servant, and one who knew that he had in
+some respects a very good place, became rebellious about the same
+time. Somehow or other the domestic phalanx had got wind of what Mr.
+Brownrigg had said--that the invalid was not in the least likely to
+die, only to grow more obnoxious--and somehow it then dawned upon them
+all that, whether they said so or not, this was a great and bitter
+blow--a terrible disappointment. They did not speak it out, no one
+spoke it out; but they showed it by short tempers, irritability, and
+a general air of disgust and tendency to mutiny. Morrison and the
+nurse chose the same day on which to utter their respective protests.
+Morrison said that his post would be a hard one at any wages, but that
+when he was told by his master that he was worth nothing, and that the
+wages of a stable-boy would more than pay for his services, he felt
+that it was not worth his while to remain.
+
+Fulvia listened to them both, giving them their interviews one after
+the other. She heard with grave dignity what they had to say. She found
+their complaints perfectly rational, and told them so. She asked the
+nurse to remain as long as she could, and then she would be relieved
+in the order of things, according to the rules of her institution.
+To Morrison she simply explained the case, and said openly that it
+depended on his goodwill whether he endured it any longer.
+
+‘If he ever gave one word of thanks, ma’am,’ said the man, ‘or ever
+spoke pleasant to me, I could do anything, for it must be awful to be
+laid on your back in that way, so helpless, and he’s younger than I am.
+But I have to wait on him hand and foot, and then be abused for it.
+It’s more than flesh and blood----’
+
+‘He will never thank you,’ said Fulvia calmly. ‘You have been with
+us ever since he began to be ill, and you must know that. He will
+never thank you. There is only me to do that, and I can assure you I
+appreciate all you have done to lighten my anxiety in the matter. I am
+very much tied as it is. If it were not for you, I should be very badly
+off. I shall be extremely sorry if you go, and you may be sure that
+everything you do for your master you do in a sense for me. I cannot
+say any more. If you will go you will go. I cannot help it!’
+
+‘Well, ma’am, to accommodate you, I’ll try again. You are a very good
+mistress, so just and so liberal--all say that in the servants’ hall,
+and we all feel it,’ said Morrison handsomely. ‘From Mrs. Perkins down
+to the scullery-maid, not one of us ever thinks that you want to do us
+a wrong.’
+
+‘I am glad to hear it. You have guessed my feelings, at any rate,
+correctly. I wish all to be satisfied and happy as--possible.’ The
+words on her lips had been, ‘as I am sad and hopeless,’ but she stopped
+in time. Morrison retired, conquered, and Fulvia was left to realize
+that the words of praise given her by a domestic servant afforded her
+about as much pleasure as any she was likely to experience within the
+walls of her own house.
+
+Left alone, she sat still for awhile, and then, lifting her arms,
+clasped her hands above her head, saying to herself, ‘How long will it
+go on? How long shall I be able to endure it?’
+
+For ever, seemed to be the answer. Had she not asked that very question
+of Minna in the days before her marriage? ‘Do you think I can go on
+living in this way for three weeks longer? Don’t you think something
+is sure to happen?’ Yet nothing had happened. Everything had gone on
+to its bitter end. She had been married, and had not died. She had
+been carried about in the company of Marchmont, hating him more and
+more every day, but she had survived it. She had not wasted away in a
+consumption, nor grown silent and wretched and broken in spirit. On
+the contrary, she had grown more and more beautiful, as she knew. As a
+girl, immediately after her marriage, she had seen both men and women
+look at her with undisguised delight, as something most beautiful and
+most charming. The admiration, then, had been as much what one gives to
+a beautiful child as to a woman.
+
+Now she never went anywhere without seeing that deeper flame come
+into men’s eyes as they beheld her, that sudden gravity settle over
+women’s faces as they scrutinized her, and saw in her as powerful a
+rival as they could possibly encounter. And while all this went on,
+there went on in her heart _pari passu_ the endless dreariness and
+barrenness and disgust to which she had never tried to put any stop
+or any limit, but which she had allowed in silence to eat away at her
+inmost soul. She allowed it almost unconsciously, but in her heart was
+the deep conviction that to do otherwise, to ‘make the best of things,’
+as the happy-go-lucky saying has it, to attempt to reconcile herself
+to her lot and her husband, would have been moral degradation beyond
+words to describe. Her ennui, her scornful silent endurance, were not
+petulance--they were religion. Such a thing as had happened to her
+might happen to fifty women of weak or shallow or vain nature, and they
+might have come to accept the inevitable, and lived lives of almost
+contented respectability, the loss of their latent finer feelings
+compensated for by the possession of the money and place for which
+their bodies had been sold. She was not one of the fifty; she was the
+fifty-first, the exception, and the slow tragedy in which she lived was
+just as inevitable and as natural as that sunset succeeds sunrise, and
+sunrise sunset.
+
+She did not acquiesce, she did not submit, she did not content herself.
+She endured, and resented. But that did not kill her, either. She told
+herself that she was as bad as the worst of them; she just lived on
+and slept when she was not prevented from doing so, and ate, and did
+not become melancholy; she read books and newspapers, and remembered
+what was in them, and was, when she came to think about it, very much
+surprised at herself for doing so.
+
+‘How long can I endure it? For ever.’ Thus, so far, had run the
+question and answer. But to-day, when she asked the question, there was
+not cold, fastidious disgust in her mind, but raging rebellion, and the
+question, ‘How long can I?’ seemed to turn into, ‘Why should I?’
+
+It was early in the forenoon when the unpleasant interviews with the
+nurse and Morrison had taken place. It was still considerably before
+twelve when she rose from her chair, went into the hall, took a broad
+straw hat from the hook on which it hung, and went out into the blazing
+August sunshine.
+
+The grounds of Yewridge Hall were of considerable extent--they were
+varied by nature, and had been judiciously manipulated by a good
+landscape gardener. Fulvia took her way to that part of them most
+remote from her own house and Minna’s, to where a small lake, partly
+natural and partly artificial, made a cool retreat in the summer heat,
+and a most useful skating place in winter. There was a boat-house, with
+a little boat in it, and there was a kind of summer-house made of rough
+logs covered with bark, such as may be seen in many a park and garden
+in the country. To this part of the grounds Minna and her party never
+penetrated unless by invitation. Minna had a wholesome conviction as to
+the value of the adage, ‘Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbour’s house,
+lest he grow weary of thee, and so hate thee.’ Moreover, Fulvia had
+once said to her that she found the solitude of the spot a great boon,
+and often went there to be alone.
+
+She did not hurry this morning, but walked slowly towards the spot,
+clad in her cool-looking white morning gown, with its fresh simplicity
+and plainness. It took her ten minutes to reach the place she was
+going to. Though her face did not change, her eyes dilated as she came
+along between the trees towards the side of the pond, and saw Hans
+there, with his easel and other artist’s apparatus, though he had not
+apparently fixed upon the spot on which to plant the easel.
+
+She had come along noiselessly. His eyes were cast down, and he seemed
+to be lost in reflection when she first saw him, but as she drew
+nearer, slowly and ever more slowly, he raised his eyes and bent them
+full upon her. Fulvia stopped. Hans laid down all the things that were
+in his hands, and went to meet her, removing his cap as he did so. He
+took both her hands into his own, and looked at her without speaking.
+
+‘Have you been here long?’ she asked in a quiet, almost toneless voice.
+
+‘Half an hour, perhaps. I don’t know.’
+
+‘And you were not impatient?’
+
+‘I was, and I was not. I thought I should never see you, and yet I was
+absolutely certain that something--probably something disagreeable--had
+prevented you from coming. What has happened?’
+
+‘Oh!’ she said in a prolonged tone of weariness and exasperation, ‘that
+which is always happening. It is the same story over and over again. A
+miserable, sordid bother. I have been begging a servant man to try if
+he can’t stay with us a little longer, just to make life endurable to
+me. He has kindly consented to do so, and I am much in his debt.’
+
+‘Mein Gott!’ exclaimed Hans, between his teeth. He had not let go of
+her hands. He drew them together, now, to his breast, and held them
+enfolded there, and looked down into her face with an expression of
+longing which seemed to say, ‘I will force you to smile, and to look
+different.’
+
+‘This cannot go on,’ he said at last with low-voiced anger.
+‘You are worse each time I see you--more sad, more hopeless and
+lifeless-looking. You will not look into my eyes now. You will not see
+how I love you, or you could not look so stern and immovable. If you
+would smile as you always have done before----’
+
+Fulvia without a word raised her eyes and looked straight into his.
+There was not the shadow of a smile on her face; there was not the
+least sign of relaxation in what he had truly called her ‘stern’
+expression.
+
+‘No, you don’t smile! What is the meaning of it? The last time we met
+you told me you had lost that despair, that carelessness whether you
+lived or died. You looked quite glad, Fulvia mia. But to-day it is all
+there again, and I believe you will dare to tell me that I do not love
+you enough, could not make you happy.’
+
+‘No, no, no; it is not that! I get depressed oftener than I used to
+do. I feel very miserable this morning. I can’t cast it off all in a
+moment. But I want to live,’ she whispered, in a passionate abandonment
+of eagerness--‘I want to live. To die now, after all the death I have
+lived through, with life just breaking, just holding out its hand to
+me--oh, by all the gods! it surely cannot happen--such a thing cannot
+happen!’
+
+‘It shall not happen; I will not let it happen!’ said Hans, and had any
+keen observer been there--one who could have listened unmoved to the
+passionate utterances, and impartially weighed the meaning and value
+of both--that observer must have been struck with the thinness and
+impotence of the man’s utterances, as compared with those of the woman.
+
+He it was who counselled hope and spoke of happiness, and would hear
+nought of despondency, nought of doubt or difficulties. She it was who
+was stern and sad, and, in the midst of her agonized debate with her
+love, contemplated the possibility of bitterness and dissatisfaction
+even in the fulfilment of it. The view which each took was sufficiently
+typical of their respective characters. Hans would have none of
+disaster, none of doubt or difficulty, because he could not or would
+not have fronted them, had they come. She spoke of them, discussed
+them, expected them, because she had within her the stuff with which to
+battle with them. Of course, the lighter, more sanguine strain sounded
+the stronger at that stage of the proceedings. It made more noise, and
+was set in a more effective key. It imposed upon even her.
+
+‘To live merely as you have been living, and are living just now, is
+a simply intolerable idea,’ he said, with considerable passion in his
+tones. ‘For you, it is hideous to be in that house; for me, it is like
+hell, only to think of your being there.’
+
+‘What am I to do?’ asked Fulvia faintly.
+
+For the time being there was no more firmness nor decision left in her
+aspect. Her lips trembled, her eyes sank and wavered, her voice shook.
+
+‘Leave it at once and come with me. I will take you away. Listen. That
+journey I was talking of--we will take it together, you and I. First
+we will go to Italy, very, very far South--to Sicily, to some place
+where no foreigners ever go. Think of it now, at this moment--the life,
+the sunshine, and the glory of it; then think of this bleak place and
+this bleak life; this cold air, that chill gray sea, those cold purple
+moors. We will hide nothing. In a very short time everything will be
+quite right. He’--he nodded in the direction of the Hall--‘will have
+applied to the law for redress of the wrong you have done him, which,
+as you are the sinner and he the saint, with all the good and pious
+world on his side, will be quickly accorded to him. Then you are free,
+and then you are my wife, who shall never know a grief or a pain or a
+harsh word or a humiliation again. That is what I want you to do.’
+
+‘There is only one thing that prevents me from doing it,’ said Fulvia
+quietly, more quietly than he liked.
+
+‘Loss of position and consideration, I suppose you mean--all the
+precious whited sepulchre business in which society deals. It is a mere
+prejudice, as you know. You are at present on the right side as regards
+that.... What pleasure has it ever brought you? What good has it done
+you?’
+
+‘I don’t mean that at all. I have tried that, and I find that, though
+it has its value--there is more in it, Hans, than you will own--yet
+one may pay too high a price for it--when you are an exceptional
+case’--she spoke bitterly. ‘You see, caro mio, society is arranged to
+meet the needs of the many who don’t think, and who only want to have
+things made easy for them. The few, who have not been lucky enough to
+make themselves fit into it, must suffer the consequences of their
+stupidity.’
+
+‘Don’t taunt me with abstract reasoning when I am dying to hear a word
+of kindness from you,’ he besought her. Indeed, abstract reasoning in
+any shape was distasteful to Hans.
+
+‘Well, I will be very concrete, very prosaic, and very narrow,’ said
+she with a faint smile. ‘It is not the fear of losing my distinguished
+position in society, nor my spotless reputation, which really is a
+perfectly negative kind of good. I am thinking of what all of them down
+there would feel.’
+
+She moved her hand towards Minna’s house.
+
+‘What utter nonsense! They know; they are not children, they are not
+puritans. I believe Minna would rather see you happy than what people
+are fools enough to call blameless, any day.’
+
+‘You do not know Minna, then. Her love is very dear to me. Sometimes,
+in my wretchedness, I think I am past caring for anything of the kind.
+But when I think of Minna heartbroken, I can’t bear it. And worse than
+that--Signor Oriole.’ She whispered his name.
+
+Hans was not without the coarseness which comes, not of wilful malice,
+but of utter incompetency to distinguish between what may be said and
+what may not.
+
+‘The last person in the world who could blame you,’ he said almost
+sharply.
+
+‘Did I say he would blame me? Shall I break his heart because he would
+have no right to blame me for doing so?’
+
+‘They cannot wish you to go on leading this hell upon earth existence
+any longer,’ said Hans savagely. ‘Sit down here, on this bench beside
+me, and let us see the thing fairly, from all sides.’
+
+She shook her head.
+
+‘My friend, why fatigue ourselves with anything of the kind? There is
+only one side from which to see it. Shall I leave my husband, whom I
+hate, with right and reason, and my friends whom I love, to go away
+with you, whom I adore, and of whom I know nothing?’
+
+‘Know nothing of me!’ echoed Hans, forgetting his rapture in his
+surprise at her words. ‘Why, Fulvia, you have known me for six
+years--six whole years.’
+
+‘I have known of you. I have not known you,’ she said, smiling.
+
+‘Don’t leave me in this awful suspense,’ he besought her. ‘Tell me now
+when you will come. Tell me that you will come.’
+
+‘I can’t now,’ said Fulvia simply. ‘I am quite decided about one thing.
+I will not make up my mind when I am vexed and angry, and jarred to my
+heart’s core, as----’
+
+‘My darling!’ whispered Hans, a flush of triumph in his dark eyes.
+
+‘As I have been this morning. What I do I will do deliberately. Then I
+shall be strong enough to go through with it.’
+
+‘My darling!’ he whispered again. Fulvia’s eyes wavered at the words.
+‘Promise me, then, when you will come. Tell me when you will tell me.’
+
+‘You must give me three days. This is Friday. On Monday I will meet you
+here again. I promise you that I will have made up my mind.’
+
+‘Three days!’ repeated Hans.
+
+‘Yes,’ replied Fulvia. ‘It is a terribly short time in which to decide
+that one will----’
+
+She paused. Hans did not press her farther. He made no complaint. He
+had marked her words. She did not say, ‘to decide whether one will,’ but
+‘that one will.’ The victory was his.
+
+‘Do not let us talk about that any more,’ said Fulvia; ‘it only
+brings back again all the horrors I have gone through. But do talk of
+something else.’
+
+‘About anything that you like,’ replied Hans, who was sitting beside
+her on the bench, and, with one elbow on his knee and his cheek pressed
+upon his hand, was looking at her with, as it seemed to Fulvia, all
+his soul in his eyes. There was all of her soul, at least, in the full
+gaze which returned his.
+
+It would have been very difficult to say in what way their friendship
+had begun; how the acquaintanceship of their youthful days had been
+renewed, and how it had grown and developed silently and almost
+imperceptibly through a thousand subtle delicate changes into the
+present stage, when all talk of ‘friendship’ and sympathy was discarded
+and the words ‘I love you’ had been many a time exchanged on both
+sides. Fulvia said the least, showed the least; with her it had gone
+too deep for words. The very fact that all these instincts of her
+nature had been so crushed, martyred, and repressed, ever since the
+day on which her mother had handed her over to Marchmont, gave them
+additional strength and energy now that they had been aroused. In
+the warmth of this love, which expressed itself in terms of the most
+delicate homage, all the warmth and passion of her own nature came to
+life, grew, expanded, developed into an overmastering love, which,
+however reticent on the outside, within knew no bounds. Almost had she
+grown to think it well that, if she and Hans were to be united, it
+would have to be at the cost of her outside glory.
+
+No price seemed too great to pay for the experience of a natural love,
+a spontaneous, mutual delight, an exchange of soul. This was Fulvia’s
+inner conviction, and with all the strength of her nature she gloried
+in it; and in all the knowledge of the bitterness of that Dead Sea
+fruit upon which she had so long been trying to nourish herself, she
+could not have enough of the sweetness of this. She was reckless of
+the consequences; her whole emotional system was strung up, goaded to
+rebellion against her present situation; she often marvelled herself at
+the thin thread which held her back from responding to Hans with all
+the eagerness which he showed himself.
+
+Yet, thin as that thread was--woven out of shadows and cobwebs, as
+it appeared to her, the memory of certain faces, the echo of certain
+voices--it did hold her back, and kept her grave and reticent where
+Hans was wild and impassioned. He spoke out his feelings, raged
+against her unhappiness, and the cause of it, kissed her hands and her
+feet: one day he had found her alone in the afternoon, resting on a
+couch, and, maddened by the oppressed silence with which she listened
+to what he had to say, had knelt down beside the sofa, and covered
+those little feet with adoring kisses. Hans it was who did all this,
+and gazed at her in a rapture of love, and spoke words to her whose
+adoration drowned the somewhat false ring which sometimes sounded
+through them. Fulvia it was who was calm and almost silent, receiving
+it with a passion of inner gratitude, but seldom speaking, seldom
+giving expression to her feelings. It was as if her daily life made
+such expressions almost trivial, so stern was the wretchedness she felt
+at home. Nevertheless, there were now and then, very rarely, moments
+in which she broke this austere gravity, and gave him a look or a word
+which repaid days or weeks of waiting and severity.
+
+This morning, when they had been sitting for a long time almost silent,
+she turned to him, laid her hand for a moment upon his, and said:
+
+‘Hans, it is since I knew you that I feel I have a right to live. I
+never have lived. I will live; I will not die without having lived.’
+
+His heart sprang to his mouth. What was this but a promise? He lifted
+her hand to his lips, saying nothing audibly. He did not even wish to
+convey too much by a look, lest she should be startled, or begin to
+repent her of her decision. He asked no more, and did not even thank
+her--in words.
+
+The sun grew hotter as mid-day was passed, and cast a warm glow into
+even this shady corner, and the lights and shadows played about and
+chequered the surface of the water, and danced on the footpath, and
+flitted over Fulvia’s face, under the shadow of her large hat. It was a
+brief dream of rest and repose, of ease from pain, and of hope for the
+future.
+
+‘Someone is coming!’ exclaimed Hans suddenly, in a tone of startled
+annoyance, as he raised himself and looked in the direction of the
+footsteps which he heard.
+
+‘Well,’ said Fulvia, with a superb, almost dreaming indifference, ‘let
+someone come.’
+
+‘You do not mind this being interrupted: I do,’ said Hans angrily.
+‘Confound him! whoever he may be.’
+
+‘No--not him. I’m glad to see him,’ Fulvia retorted, looking quietly
+forwards towards the figure of Signor Giuseppe, who was advancing up
+the path.
+
+He lifted his hat. Hans could not conceal his annoyance and vexation.
+Fulvia, on the contrary, rose and walked towards him with a gracious
+willingness to meet him.
+
+Minna had often noticed this profound respect in the bearing of the
+young woman to the old man. It spoke volumes to her.
+
+‘Good-morning!’ said she. ‘I am glad you have found your way here. Did
+you know I was here?’
+
+‘No; I was strolling through the woods,’ said Signor Oriole, ‘and I
+came round this way--that is all.--Ah, Riemann,’ he added, with a
+glance more piercingly keen than he had ever bestowed upon that young
+man, ‘you are here, then! I thought I heard you telling Mrs. Hastings
+you were going to sketch by the river?’
+
+‘I changed my mind. It was so blazingly hot by the river. Mrs.
+Marchmont once kindly told me I might come here when I liked, and I
+availed myself of her permission.’
+
+‘What are you drawing?’ asked Signor Oriole dryly.
+
+‘I have not yet decided. Would you have me turn my back upon Mrs.
+Marchmont, and sink myself in a sketch?’ asked Hans, in even a worse
+humour.
+
+Fulvia had become very grave. Her natural spirit of truth and frankness
+liked not these evasions and subterfuges. Why need he have told anyone
+where he was going? He was a free agent. Then she felt sure that he had
+done it out of consideration for her. He did not know how perfectly
+indifferent she felt to all outsiders and what they thought. He wished
+to shield her. It was all right. It was his true and noble self.
+
+‘I am going away now. I am wanted at home, and cannot stay longer,’ she
+said. ‘Good-morning, Mr. Riemann.--Will you come with me?’ she added,
+turning to Signor Oriole.
+
+‘Willingly.--A rivederci, Riemann.’
+
+They walked away towards the Hall.
+
+Hans, left alone, looked dark and angry.
+
+‘Women will be women to the end of the world,’ he told himself with the
+conviction of one who has made a discovery. ‘Worship them, and they
+insult you. Bully them, and they worship you. That has always been my
+experience.’
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+‘Where is Mrs. Hastings this morning?’ asked Fulvia.
+
+‘She has just gone out with her brother and the _bambina_. I
+trust,’ said Signor Giuseppe, ‘that you were not as displeased with
+me as Riemann evidently was, for intruding upon you. I assure you it
+happened entirely by accident.’
+
+Fulvia’s face flushed.
+
+‘Do not speak to me like that!’ she exclaimed in a hurried voice. ‘I
+am always glad to see you--everywhere, and at any time. You have the
+right to come where I am.’
+
+‘As for rights, we will say nothing,’ he said sadly. ‘I know you used
+to be glad to see me in the old days--when you used to penetrate into
+my little dark room, and sit upon my bed, cross-legged, like a tailor,
+seize upon one of my books, and ask questions. Do you remember?’
+
+‘Do I remember?’
+
+‘No matter what I was doing,’ he pursued with a smile, ‘your questions
+began. You would read aloud; you would know the meaning of everything;
+you----’
+
+‘I must have been a dreadful little nuisance,’ said Fulvia, in a voice
+that was not quite steady.
+
+‘Oh, indeed yes! I often showed you that I thought so, did I not?’
+
+‘Ah, repeatedly!’ she exclaimed, suddenly seizing his arm in her hands,
+as she had so often done as a child, and smiling at him with a child’s
+delight. Then, with a sudden revulsion of feeling: ‘Don’t, don’t! Do
+not talk to me about those days, Beppo. I am miserable enough, without
+having my former happiness recalled to me.’
+
+He came to a pause, took her hands in his, and looked into her face
+with an expression which, she told herself, was almost divine, in its
+immense love and tenderness, its sorrow, its yearning.
+
+‘Carissima mia, I recall your former happiness because I would save you
+from future misery. Speak to me face to face! The man there, who was
+with you, is dear to you?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Fulvia, with dilated eyes, and in a whisper.
+
+‘I say nothing about it. I have lived my life, and others will live
+their lives, and no experience of others can save them from walking
+straight up to their fate. That you should encounter some such
+experience was absolutely inevitable. Only listen to me. Suppose that
+characters could be taken in the hand like oranges, and weighed in a
+balance like any material thing; suppose I held the scales, and placed
+your character on the one side, and his on the other: do you know what
+would happen?’
+
+She looked at him breathlessly.
+
+‘Why, his would kick the beam,’ said Signor Oriole, with a scornful
+laugh. ‘My proud Fulvia in love with a thing of straw--at the mercy of
+a _farceur_.’
+
+She grew rigid, and an angry light came into her eyes.
+
+‘You are utterly mistaken,’ she said very coldly. ‘I know him; you
+do not. You have no right to speak of him in that way. As for future
+misery’--she laughed--‘no misery could be greater than that which I
+have endured, and which I am enduring at present. I am going back to it
+now at once. Good-bye.’
+
+She snatched her hands out of the clasp of his, and, without giving him
+a look, sped on in the direction of the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+Arrived at the house, Fulvia was met almost at once by a servant, who
+told her that her husband was very ill and in severe pain.
+
+‘I will go to him,’ she said in a perfectly unmoved voice, and when the
+servant had gone she closed her eyes for a moment, as if to shut out
+what was immediately around her.
+
+In truth, she needed all the strength that lay in her nature to give
+her the courage, coming from the interviews she had just had, to
+encounter what she knew lay before her.
+
+Marchmont, as an invalid, was not agreeable to talk with. Tortured
+with pain, to which he brought no sort of self-control or resolution
+to endure, his incessant cry was for morphia or chloral to drown his
+sufferings, and although utterly dependent on the kindness of those
+about him for help, for relief, and for attention, he never attempted
+to conciliate any one of them, but, losing all sense of decency, would
+shriek at them all manner of accusations--that they wished for his
+death, and had endeavoured to compass it; that they had purposely
+given him something to put him into this state of torture; everything,
+in short, that a good man who is being martyred could possibly throw
+at a set of miscreants who were taking advantage of his weakness to
+murder him was hurled by Marchmont at the heads of his attendants, who,
+if they had spoken out their minds, would have told him that only
+self-control on their parts prevented them from doing what he accused
+them of, and so getting rid of him for ever.
+
+If the attack lasted only a short time, perhaps the nurse and servants
+would hold out without bursting into open rebellion; if it endured
+long, Fulvia generally found herself left at the end of it in almost
+sole attendance. The servants were free: they did not receive their
+wages and render their services in order to be abused and maltreated;
+but a wife must surely succour her husband, must be devoted to
+him in sickness and in health. Very faithfully, very coldly, very
+determinedly, had she, so far, performed her duty. The attack this
+time was an even worse one than usual. Mr. Brownrigg became uneasy,
+and at last said to Fulvia that further advice would be desirable.
+The invalid, he plainly intimated, besides being so very ill, was so
+captious and dissatisfied that he, Mr. Brownrigg, would be glad that
+his treatment should have the approval of a high authority. Fulvia at
+once agreed--anything that Mr. Brownrigg thought desirable. She would
+beg him to telegraph to Sir Simon Sykes, the specialist whom Marchmont
+had already seen. They arranged this, and Mr. Brownrigg rode away. Then
+Fulvia went to Marchmont, and told him what had been settled. At first
+he seemed satisfied, then suddenly, with a vicious snarl, exclaimed:
+
+‘It’s all rubbish. He’ll want at least two hundred guineas for taking
+such a journey here and back to London.’
+
+‘Quite, I should say,’ replied his wife coldly. ‘And what difference
+can it make to you if he wanted five hundred guineas?’
+
+‘Trust a beggar to be apt at spending other people’s money,’ was the
+gracious retort.
+
+Fulvia did not speak. She slightly shrugged her shoulders, without any
+perceptible change of countenance, only her whole aspect expressed a
+supreme disdain, which Marchmont himself saw. Absorbed, however, in the
+wrongs which were being done to him and his money, he proceeded, after
+a glance at her:
+
+‘And he’ll sit here for ten minutes, and tell us nothing that we
+didn’t know before, and then he’ll go away, and jabber with you in the
+drawing-room. You are all in league against me--every one of you.’
+
+‘Do you think we should find it very difficult to dispose of you if
+we were?’ she asked, with icy contempt. ‘As you do not wish to have
+Sir Simon, I will send a man after Mr. Brownrigg, and ask him not to
+telegraph.’
+
+‘Do if you dare!’ almost shrieked Marchmont. ‘I’m ill, I dare say, but
+I have the use of my brains yet, and I know what I am doing. You want
+to leave me in the hands of this wretched village ignoramus, so that I
+may get partial recovery, and then you will be satisfied.’
+
+‘You credit me with complicated motives. I am quite sure of this,
+that if you don’t behave more civilly to the “village ignoramus,” as
+you call him, he will refuse to come near you any more; and you will
+have to trust me alone as your physician. Of course no man, not to
+mention a gentleman, will stand being spoken to as if he were a thief
+and an impostor. I really think you had better try to understand that
+thoroughly.’
+
+Marchmont subsided a little. There was nothing he feared so much as
+being left alone with his illness; rather than suffer that, he would
+have grovelled before the meanest apothecary and would have implored
+him not to leave him to his fate.
+
+That afternoon an answer came from Sir Simon to say he would come on
+the following afternoon. Fulvia had promised Hans to meet him on the
+morning of that day, but she sent him a note to say:
+
+‘I cannot leave the house this morning, nor at all till evening. But I
+must see you before I try to sleep to-night. I have much to explain to
+you. All scruples have disappeared. I cannot live in this any longer.
+Meet me after nine, at the same place. I will come and will tell you
+what I have arranged.’
+
+The day wore on. She scarcely left Marchmont’s side, sitting near him,
+ministering to him during the hours in which the nurse was to take
+her rest; looking at him every now and then, with a strange, sombre
+light in her eyes, the inner glow of all the suppressed passion and
+wrong, and injustice and wretchedness, which for five years had been
+accumulating in her heart--the only light which can be given by the
+eyes which belong to a ruined life. All the day she was saying to
+herself, with fixed, immovable resolution:
+
+‘Only this day more--then an end of it. I will wait till it is over.
+I will see this man, who will tell me just what they have all told
+me--the same wretched platitudes, meaning nothing; trying to cover
+up the one word, “hopeless,” trying to conceal the fact that it is
+death coming on. It has begun--it will be a long time before it is
+over, and I will not wait all that time. To-night, oh, Dio mio! to
+leave the house, and never to return to it--never, never! Never to
+see this thing again, nor to hear his voice, nor to feel the shudder
+which comes whenever I go near him. I will tell Hans everything when
+I meet him to-night. Then I shall make him take me to the inn in the
+village, and leave me there till to-morrow. I won’t go to Minna--oh
+no, impossible! I would not pollute--no, pollute is not the word: it
+is remaining here which is pollution. I would not deceive her--that is
+it. I would not tell her one thing while all the time I was meaning to
+do quite another. That is a sort of pollution--yes, it is the kind at
+which I have never yet arrived. I will stay at the inn till to-morrow
+morning, and then he will come for me, and we will go away together. I
+shall make no secret of it. He can do as he likes. He may tell them
+or not. It is nothing to me now. My life has been so ruined that, if
+I am to keep my friends who have never gone through this fire, I must
+live in undying misery and inward degradation. If I choose happiness
+and freedom, I must lose all my friends. Some lucky people can keep
+both. I have tried the one thing, and as long as there was nothing else
+I could just live in it--only just. But now ... one may be good when
+one does wrong sometimes. I can see that very plainly. One may be doing
+everything that is right and proper, and at the same time be a very bad
+person.
+
+‘Wrong and right--what is wrong, and what is right? Because I was sold
+shamefully when I could not help myself, and could see no way out of
+it, does that deprive me of the power of judging, when I am older and
+have had much experience? Who is to settle for us, if not ourselves?
+Oh, how wrong I was not to go away with Beppo--to run away, when he
+said he would take me with him! Now people will all say I have done
+wrong, but I will live rightly. It is quite right. I am not afraid. I
+wonder why I stay here now? Oh, it is better, I think. I will go on
+till night--till I have said good-night to him. He will expect to see
+me again in the morning, and time will pass, and I shall not be there.
+I shall not take any notice of him at all. It is not necessary. He may
+wonder and inquire and speculate, and say what he pleases. He may learn
+all his humiliation in public, for aught I care. It does not matter ...
+what time is it now, I wonder? Lunch-time, nearly. Then there is the
+afternoon, and it will be almost evening when the doctor comes, and--he
+will stay all night, I suppose.
+
+‘Well, I will give orders that all is to be ready for him. I shall dine
+with him, and talk to him, in that awful room, which is just like a
+sepulchre. The servants will be about, behind our chairs, waiting upon
+us, just as usual. The doctor will think me a very charming woman, and
+will be quite pleased to talk to me. We shall not mention him’--she
+cast a side-glance towards Marchmont, who, under the influence of a
+morphia injection, was now lying still, with eyes closed and yellowish,
+waxy-looking face, like a dead man. ‘We shall both know that there
+is no need to say anything; talking about unpleasant subjects is not
+appetising. Nothing will make any difference. In his heart the doctor
+will say to himself: “I wonder what she married him for--money, I
+suppose. He must have been a horror when she first met him. Women will
+do anything to get money and money’s worth.”
+
+‘After dinner I shall say that I am going to see my husband; that I am
+very tired, and shall not see him again to-night; that he is to ask
+for everything he wants, and that I have given orders that he is to be
+attended to. Then we shall shake hands, and I shall leave him in the
+dining-room with the dessert and the wine. Then I shall come back here,
+and shall make inquiries, and shall speak to the nurse, and shall say,
+to her more than to him, “Well, I hope you will have a good-night.” I
+shall then look round as one does before one leaves a room in which
+someone is ill, and I shall repeat, “Good-night,” and shall go....
+In ten minutes more I shall be on the path to the pond, breathing.’
+She suddenly lifted her arms above her head, and stretched them out
+wide and high, as if to take in a deep draught of air, then heaved
+a huge sigh, and slowly let them fall again. The sigh was repeated,
+and her face looked worn, and almost desperate. Almost mechanically
+her thoughts went on, and with none of the excited hope which had
+heretofore floated them through her mind: ‘I shall breathe--oh, to
+breathe again, after being stifled for five years!’
+
+She sat motionless again, until a servant came and told her that lunch
+was ready. Marchmont was still sleeping or stupefied. She went away,
+leaving the nurse, who had just come in, to take her place. In the
+dining-room she dismissed the servant who was in waiting, and sat
+down alone in the immense, rather light, cold room, at a great table
+spread with snowy linen and glittering with silver and glass. There was
+perhaps no need for her to endure this solitary, cold, and comfortless
+splendour; but it is happy people who think of comforts and who arrange
+pleasant places in which to eat and drink and chat, not those whose
+lives are spoiled by a great wrong, so that they have no energy to
+attend to such trifles.
+
+She took something on her plate, but found she could not eat it.
+
+‘Am I excited, feverish? How ridiculous’ she thought, shrugging her
+shoulders and realizing for the first time that her lips were dry and
+her mouth parched. She took a draught of water, and sat looking at the
+untasted food, and thinking of quite other things.
+
+‘How hungry I used to be once! How delicious everything tasted! How
+well I remember one day when Beppo took me! We walked--we could not
+afford carriages, not even a little carriage for a franc, to the
+gate--we walked on to the Appian Way. How beautiful it was! It was a
+spring morning. How the larks sang! how the little flowers gleamed
+in the grass, and the lizards ran in and out of the crevices of the
+tombs! and how the aqueducts marched away over the campagna towards the
+hills--those hills! How many things he told me! I put my arm through
+his, and we went on, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, looking at
+things and talking about them till we got past Casale Rotondo. There I
+grew impatient, and said it was time to have our lunch. We sat down by
+the roadside and ate. What had we? Each a hard-boiled egg and some of
+the household bread, without any butter; an orange or two, and a little
+bottle of red wine, with a tin cup from which to drink it. When it
+was done I was still hungry, and said so. He looked at me suddenly--I
+remember it well--with a cloud on his face.
+
+‘“Ma che! why did you not speak?” he said. “I would have given you
+mine.”
+
+‘How I laughed! I was a mere child, and I thought a man like Beppo,
+so strong and so big compared with me, must be much more in need of
+food than I. Then he told me, I remember, how people like me, who were
+growing still and to whom all the world was new, needed so much more
+nourishment and so much oftener than those who were quite grown up and
+established, and who were not surprised at anything any more--like him.
+I said, “How could being surprised make one hungry?” and I told him he
+was silly. He said, “Wait, my child. By the time you are ready to tell
+me that you understand what I say, I shall be dead; but I think, if you
+come to my grave and tell it to me there, I shall hear it.” Oh, how
+awfully sad were the things he sometimes said--all mixed with curious,
+funny observations at the same time! For the rest of our excursion he
+kept regretting every now and then that I had not had the other egg,
+and at the first little shop within the gate, as we returned, he bought
+me a _panino_ with butter. It was very good.’
+
+Fulvia had forgotten in her reminiscences the meal that actually stood
+before her. She had scarcely tasted food, but rose suddenly from the
+table, and very soon went back to her charge.
+
+Presently he awoke from his drugged sleep to fresh pain, fresh fury, to
+ever more exacting demands and wilder accusations. The hours dragged
+on until about six o’clock, when a servant came and told her that Sir
+Simon Sykes had arrived, and was in the library with Mr. Brownrigg.
+She went towards the room slowly, saying to herself, as if it were not
+really clear in her own mind:
+
+‘It is coming nearer now, much nearer. There are not many hours more.
+Six o’clock, seven, eight, nine; in three hours I shall be free.’
+
+She lifted her eyes towards the open hall door; the sunshine streamed
+in. All without was light and bright and warm. That was freedom.
+
+She opened the library door and went into the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+Very late that night Signor Oriole sat in the room which was called
+his study, quite alone. He slept less and less as he grew older, and
+he was left, as usual, with all the lower part of the house to himself
+in a dead silence. His books and papers and writing materials were all
+around him. His study was removed only by a narrow little anteroom
+from that of Minna--her sitting-room and studio combined. These three
+rooms were old, with low roofs, and beams across the ceilings; but the
+original windows, small and high up in the wall, had been removed, and
+French ones opening to the ground substituted for them. Of course the
+three windows all commanded the same view, of a woodland glade and a
+broad slope of grass like an avenue between thick walls of dark trees
+which sloped upwards, climbing a hill. It was a portion of the park
+belonging to Yewridge Hall--a part which the inhabitants of Minna’s
+house were free to wander in as much as they chose.
+
+After Minna and Rhoda had gone upstairs Signor Oriole went to his
+study. The lamp was lighted, but the window was still open, and he went
+to it, and stood there, looking out. The yellow lamplight was behind
+him. Before him was the dark solemnity of the glade and wood, but that,
+too, soon began to take a darkly silvery appearance. A strange light,
+at once deep and pale, began to palpitate in the sky. His eyes were
+riveted on the summit of the little hill, for the awakening, if one
+may so call it, in the sky seemed to proceed from there. Whiter and
+whiter it grew, clearer and clearer, till all nature seemed to wait
+breathlessly for the visitor whose advent was thus foretold.
+
+She came at last; the outline of the hill-top grew suddenly sharp and
+clear, then a crisp white spark glittered on it--spread, grew, dilated,
+enlarged into a gradually growing silver disc. All above, below,
+around, is glorified, regalized, resplendent, as the moon floats up
+with majesty into the clear dark spaces of the heavens.
+
+‘Ah!’ said Signor Giuseppe to himself, as he watched the spectacle with
+the beginning of a smile, and with the matter-of-fact eyes of a child
+of the South, ‘it is a fine night.’
+
+He nodded his head, whose white hairs had taken a reflected glitter
+from the light without, and, leaving the blind up and the shutters
+open, he turned again to his writing-table, took up his pen, and
+resumed his work. He was writing about days long gone by; about old
+Rome, and things that had happened in her. It was an employment in
+which he succeeded, almost always, in finding repose for his mind,
+peace for his thoughts.
+
+He had written on for some time when he heard the hall-door open and
+shut. He had no doubt as to who the visitor might be, but as a matter
+of precaution he got up, opened the door, and looked forth into the
+hall, where the light was still burning.
+
+He had been right. Hans Riemann was there, hanging up his little
+woollen cap upon a peg of the hatstand. His face was pale and angry.
+When he saw Signor Giuseppe, he did not speak, but looked at him with
+a curious expression.
+
+‘You have fastened the door?’ asked the latter.
+
+‘Yes, I’m off to bed. I think I shall be off altogether, very soon.
+This is a dull hole when all is said and done.’
+
+‘In the name of our hostess and her family I thank you for your kind
+expressions,’ replied Signor Giuseppe, very politely and very cuttingly.
+
+Hans’ face flushed.
+
+‘Did it sound rude?’ he asked, in a tone of indifference which
+heightened the said rudeness. ‘I’m sorry if it did. Good-night.’
+
+He ran quickly up the stairs. Signor Oriole, shrugging his shoulders,
+returned to his study and his work. After some time--he knew not how
+long--the first sensation stole over him of something which he took
+for weariness. At first he did not heed it, but wrote on, wishing to
+finish a long paragraph in which he was engaged. The curious sensation
+continued. He laid his pen down, and, resting one elbow on the table,
+propped his head on his hand, and meditated a little. As he meditated,
+he gradually grew conscious of the intense silence and stillness which
+prevailed both inside and outside--conscious of it, and impressed by
+it. It must have been working itself into his senses and his brain all
+the time that he had been writing, and most likely irritating him.
+Signor Giuseppe was a true Roman; he could work better, play better,
+think, philosophize, yea, even sleep better, in a noise than in the
+most idyllic silence ever known. Just now he shrugged his shoulders,
+and muttered to himself: ‘Per Dio! what a deathly silence!’
+
+Oppressed by it, he knew not why, he went towards the window with the
+half-formed intention of closing it. It was as if the immense silence
+of the night flowed in through the open window, and imposed itself upon
+that which reigned in the house also, and made it almost intolerable to
+him.
+
+Standing there near the window, and looking out, and again oppressed by
+the silence, he recalled to himself the walk home with Minna one night,
+from her studio to Casa Dietrich, when she had spoken to him of the
+noise of Rome, and of how she delighted in it.
+
+To Casa Dietrich that night the signora had returned, had summoned him
+to her rooms, and had told him that Marchmont had spoken to her about
+Fulvia, and that she intended to marry her to him. She had told him
+with the most accurate foreknowledge of the horror it would inspire in
+him; she had listened with smiling obstinacy to all his expostulations,
+reproaches and accusations, and had then told him:
+
+‘You have yourself to thank for it. You have known for many years that
+I was not a woman to be played with with impunity. You have refused my
+reasonable wishes and demands; you must not be surprised and angry that
+when the time comes I act in the manner most convenient to my interests
+and to those of my daughter. Mio caro, I have waited a long time for
+freedom. This man offers it to me--freedom and independence. I shall
+take it. You can do what you like.’
+
+‘You say I played with you!’ he exclaimed. ‘And you--what have you done
+with me? You say I have myself to thank for it all; and you--whom have
+you to thank, that you are now in this position, that you must sell
+your child disgracefully to get what you call your freedom? Bianca,
+give the child to me. I will work for her; I will provide for her. She
+shall be no burden to you.’
+
+Bianca had laughed.
+
+‘And I?’ she asked. ‘My daughter is no burden to me. She is the most
+valuable piece of property I have. No; I have made up my mind. Do not
+trouble yourself in the matter. It is all right.’
+
+All this scene came back to him with the utmost vividness as he stood
+there in this English house, looking forth upon this English park, with
+the fresh damp English air blowing upon his forehead and face. He felt
+it not.
+
+He was again steeped in a totally different atmosphere, in the soft,
+deliciously enervating air of Rome--the odour of the streets, of the
+houses; that peculiar, half-pungent, half-debilitating perfume which
+assails the senses there, and bathes them, and takes them captive,
+pervading everything, and which is like no other atmosphere in the
+world--this ichor he felt and imbibed now, and it was like new life to
+him.
+
+The past, dark and mysterious beyond all words to describe, with its
+processions of Caesars, its armies of trained fighting men, its dream
+of fair women of every shade of vice and virtue, its holocausts of
+human victims--the blood-soaked, sun-soaked, art-soaked past; the
+vivid, noisy present, full of life and action, of battles fought and of
+grand hope for the future, in which his life had been passed--all these
+were summed up and concentrated as it were in that wondrously scented
+air of Rome, and in Rome he now was, with a fever in his veins, a
+passion of longing which tore his heart-strings, parted his lips, and
+drew from his heart a slight sound, between a groan and a sigh.
+
+    ‘Dahin, dahin geht unser Weg--
+    O Vater, lass’ uns zieh’n!’
+
+Not Mignon’s words, but Mignon’s thought was in his heart.
+
+‘I must go. I must breathe that air once again before I die--all the
+agony and all the rapture of it. I must pace those streets again, and
+feel those stones beneath my feet, though every one were a burning coal
+that blistered them.’
+
+The air blew in upon him in a rougher gust, both keen and damp, from
+the mountains of the North and her wild wastes of moorland; from her
+gray, monotonous sea, ‘the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea,’ and the
+nerves of the man of the South shuddered under its alien breath. It
+had awakened him from his dream; he opened his eyes and brought his
+thoughts once more to reality.
+
+He laid his hand on the window to push it to, and as he did so it
+seemed to him that there was a slight sound outside it. Not a sound
+whose nature he could have specified--not a sigh, not a groan or a sob,
+and certainly not a cry or a spoken word, but perhaps something of
+them all. Nothing deterred by the eeriness of the thing, for he knew
+not fear, he drew the window more widely open, instead of closing it,
+and looked forth again. The scene had become even more beautiful than
+before. Arrested, he still looked, half gazing at the view before him,
+half listening for that indescribable sound to come again, when his
+eyes, long-sighted and keen, detected at some little distance from the
+house, moving hesitatingly and uncertainly along, and emerging from the
+shadow of the wood into the moonlit grass, a slight, ink-black woman’s
+figure. It paused suddenly, and perhaps turned. Of that he could not
+be sure in the uncertain light, but the figure was there. It moved
+about now quickly, now slowly. Now it looked as if its head were bowed;
+again, as though its face were raised; and once certainly it stretched
+its arms out with the gesture of one who wrings hands in dire distress.
+
+Signor Giuseppe stood riveted to his place, not in the least afraid,
+but very curious. Now the figure had disappeared again into the shadow
+of the wood. He saw it no more, though he strained his eyes to discover
+it. He stood for some time, and was about to turn away--so dense are
+our outward senses, so doth this envelope of flesh conceal one spirit
+from another, though that other may be calling upon us, with agony
+unspeakable to bear, to help and to comfort.
+
+Thus he stood, when, coming from his right hand, from under the shadow
+of the house, the figure in one second stood immediately in front of
+him, with the light of the lamp from within falling full upon its face.
+
+That face was very pale, very drawn, very much worn with anguish and
+pain; the eyes which plunged themselves into his were haggard and
+glazed, and weary beyond description.
+
+It was Fulvia’s face; those were Fulvia’s eyes, and Fulvia’s hands they
+were which were suddenly stretched out towards him; but it was no voice
+he had ever heard before which, in a hoarse, broken whisper, groaned
+forth:
+
+‘Father!’
+
+For a moment he stood motionless--petrified; then, stretching out
+his arms too, and making a step towards her, he finished the tearing
+asunder of the veil which she had at last rent.
+
+‘My daughter!’
+
+‘Oh, help me! help me!’ she said, in the same unnatural voice, as she
+fell, with the heavy gesture of one whose will no longer controls his
+movements, into his arms, broken, desperate, recking nothing of showing
+her mortal anguish, caring no more to hide anything from his eyes, at
+any rate.
+
+He held her up in silence. Neither of them spoke for a long time after
+they had uttered those fateful words. Her hands grasped his shoulders
+with the clinging of one who has nothing else to hold by. Her head was
+prostrate, low upon his breast.
+
+Signor Giuseppe’s white hairs mingled with the bright waves and coils
+of golden brown; his lips touched them, moved, but he uttered no words,
+till at last, as she raised her face, furrowed with suffering almost
+out of resemblance to her natural one, he said in a deep voice, coming
+from his inmost soul: ‘Mia figlia, stand here no more. Come in and tell
+me what has happened and what you wish.’
+
+‘Oh, I believe you can do nothing, nothing for me, padre mio! I do not
+know why I am here--I did not mean to come. I did not mean to leave
+the side of the pond alive, and yet I came on and on here, because I
+have something to tell--there is something that someone must know. I
+am frightened! I had such a horrible dream. At least, I think it was a
+dream. Well, I will come in. No one will disturb us?’
+
+‘No one; I am alone. There will be no interruption,’ said he. ‘Come in.
+Tell me your dream. Perhaps it was no dream after all.’
+
+He drew her within the room, and closed the window at last. Fulvia
+gazed about her as if bewildered by the lamplight, and by the walls
+which surrounded her. He took her to a couch which stood against the
+wall, placed her upon it, and seated himself beside her. She took one
+of his hands between hers, and, drawing a long sigh, said:
+
+‘How strange this all is! Father, my father, my father! There is
+someone, after all. Padre mio, what will you do for me?’
+
+‘Child, anything--anything in the world, when you tell me what it is,’
+said he, with love and anguish in his voice. There was something in her
+whole aspect which frightened him, or, rather, which filled him with
+vague alarm and apprehension.
+
+Signor Giuseppe was not one of the people who are easily frightened.
+There was, however, something enigmatical in Fulvia’s demeanour--in her
+great excitement and breathless haste, and in the sudden strange pauses
+she made, when a curious, bewildered look came over her whole face, and
+her eyes looked as if they were seeking backwards in her heart for some
+clue, or purpose, or intention, which she had formed and then lost.
+
+‘What time is it?’ she asked abruptly.
+
+‘Two in the morning,’ he told her.
+
+‘Two in the morning! Well, I want you to take me away, now at once,
+from this place. Isn’t it cruel of me to ask such a thing of you? But
+I cannot help it. I have been here long enough--too long. I have been
+here so long that I have--nearly--committed a frightful sin. It is
+late--it is a strange time to be getting up and going away, I know; but
+I will go, I must go--and you will come with me.’
+
+She looked at him with an attempt at a smile, and pressed his hands
+convulsively. Signor Oriole had lived through many strange experiences,
+through scenes of ‘battle and murder and sudden death,’ through perils
+of every description, both active and passive. Many a thrill had shot
+through him in moments when his life had hung on a thread--thrills
+of excitement, thrills of nervous tension, of fierce exultation, of
+forlorn hope; but never had he experienced this thrill before--the
+thrill which is at the same time a cold chill, and which is fear.
+
+‘I will go with you when you have told me one thing,’ he said, and all
+the blood left his face. ‘You were desperate to-night when you left your
+husband’s house. How did you leave it? Have you killed him?’
+
+Fulvia rose erect from the bowed-down, crouching position of hopeless
+misery in which she had been sitting, rose as if electrified; he saw
+that her whole frame stiffened and grew rigid. Her eyes became fixed,
+her lips parted; she looked as if her spirit hung in the scales between
+reason and madness, and as if the balance might incline to madness at a
+second’s notice. There was some recollection of freezing horror in her
+soul, which his question, prompted by a flash of inspiration as to the
+worst that might have happened, had roused again in its full strength.
+He almost repented him of having asked it, and looked at her, trying
+to put an expression of tender kindness into his eyes while the awful
+fear tugged at his heart.
+
+Suddenly the expression which so froze him relaxed. Her physical
+rigidity also gave way. Her very hands became limp and nerveless, and
+she replied, as if in answer to some everyday question:
+
+‘No. I thought I would. I told him I was going to--and then--I did not.
+I came away. Now, father, let us go away--quite away.’
+
+‘At once, with all my heart,’ said he promptly, as he rose and looked
+about him. The ghastly uncertainty was gone from his heart. The light
+of reason was in Fulvia’s eyes. He knew she had spoken the truth to
+him. He was now ready to give himself up to her lightest wish, but, as
+his eyes fell upon his work and papers, upon the quiet, almost solemnly
+peaceful room, as his ears again became conscious of the silence which
+had at first annoyed, but which now soothed them, as he saw, in a
+side-glance, the broken figure of Fulvia, a load like lead settled on
+his heart.
+
+Then he took heart again. There had been no crime, let the wretchedness
+be what it might. His practical sense came forward once more; and began
+to grapple with the real and almost grotesque problem, ‘What am I to do
+with her? Where am I to take her?’
+
+‘You will not see Minna?’ he asked. ‘I could awaken her and bring her
+down here in a minute.’
+
+Fulvia shook her head, with a sigh that was almost a shudder.
+
+‘Not Minna--oh no! Let us go, and let us go alone.’
+
+She was dressed, as he now observed, as if for travelling, in a very
+plain, but trim, elegant black walking-dress, a small, closely
+fitting, black straw bonnet trimmed with velvet; a so-called dust-cloak
+which was in reality a costly thing of silk and lace, was hung over her
+arm and had remained there through all the agitation and tragedy; long
+soft gray gloves fitted her hands closely, and wrinkled over her wrists
+and arms; everything she had on was quiet and unobtrusive to the last
+degree theoretically, but elegant, fashionable, and noticeable from its
+perfect fit and style, and from the beauty and individuality of the
+woman who wore it.
+
+And nothing that she had put on could have been otherwise. We may
+change our clothes, we may transform ourselves as to outer covering, we
+may exchange the masterpieces of a Worth for the botched performances
+of a village Miss Smith, but if we are Fulvia Marchmont we can be no
+one else. The reverse holds equally good. Signor Oriole was troubled,
+not so much by the elegance and distinction which made itself apparent
+through all the seeming simplicity of the costume--he was troubled to
+know why she had that costume on at all.
+
+‘Very well,’ he said, in answer to her last words. ‘You must excuse me
+an instant, while I put one or two things in a bag and get some money.
+And you--have you anything? Are you prepared? I hope at least you have
+none of his money with you.’
+
+‘I have not a penny, carissimo. All that I have of his are these
+clothes which I have on, as one may not go about the world without
+them. As soon as we get somewhere where you can buy me some others, I
+will be without these too. I have nothing--absolutely nothing. I will
+sit here and wait for you.’
+
+He went out of the room, and softly upstairs, along a long, rambling
+passage which led to his own room, and another, both of which were
+rather remote from the rest of the house. The other room was that
+occupied by Richard Hamilton, and upon its door Signor Oriole knocked
+softly.
+
+Hamilton appeared to be a light sleeper, for his answer came at once,
+‘Who’s there?’
+
+‘I,’ said Signor Giuseppe, opening the door, which was not locked, and
+going just within the room. ‘Hamilton, I want to speak to you.’
+
+‘You--are you ill, sir?’ asked the other, in quick alarm. He struck a
+match, lighted a candle, and sat up in bed, looking at his visitor.
+
+‘No, I am not ill. Listen, and speak softly. Something has happened,
+as to which it pleases me to take you into my confidence. I can trust
+you.... My daughter is downstairs----’
+
+He paused for a moment; Hamilton stared at him as if fascinated, and
+then said, almost in a whisper:
+
+‘Fulvia?’
+
+‘Yes, Fulvia; she is in dire distress. Something which she does not
+choose to explain to me yet, or which she cannot explain, has happened.
+She has left her house; I do not call it her home----’
+
+‘No, you are right,’ said Hamilton in a deep voice. ‘Well?’
+
+‘She has chosen to break down the barrier which has always hitherto
+been between us. She has claimed my help, and has required that I shall
+take her away from here at once, now, you understand. It is her right,
+and it is my pleasure to do it. She refuses to see Minna. I think she
+is too much broken to be able to endure even Minna’s sympathy. I leave
+everything loose that belongs to me. I look to you to make all clear,
+and to explain to your sister why I leave thus.’
+
+‘But where are you going? What are you going to do?’ asked Hamilton in
+his clear tones, which always sounded so cold, and which yet were so
+much to be trusted.
+
+‘I don’t know. I suppose we are two pilgrims to----’
+
+‘That is madness. Look here: you must do something, or she will be
+worse off than ever.’
+
+‘I shall take her to Italy,’ said Signor Giuseppe, after a moment’s
+pause.
+
+‘Not to Rome, I hope?’
+
+‘No, not to Rome. I will take her to Sicily, to my home there which
+she has never seen.’
+
+‘That is right--yes, that is the right thing to do; and to set about
+it you must go to London; and there is a train to London in two hours
+from now, at ---- Junction, which is six miles away. I will drive you
+there,’ said Hamilton with utter _sang-froid_, as he cast the
+bedclothes from him and prepared to get up. ‘Do you go and pack up
+whatever you may wish to take, and in five minutes I will be ready.
+This is a business which needs speed.’
+
+‘You are right. Your head is clear,’ said Signor Oriole, with the ghost
+of his old smile, at once sarcastic and approving. He left the room
+and went to his own, where he collected all he could think of into a
+small portmanteau, stowed away his pocket-book, some notes and gold,
+and a cheque-book on his London bankers, and was ready. As he emerged
+from his room after this occupation, Hamilton came out of his, looking
+as cool, as self-possessed, and as fit as if he were going down to
+breakfast in the everyday way.
+
+‘I have written a note to Minna,’ he said: ‘I will put it outside her
+door, so she will have it when she is called. Now let us go downstairs.
+Of course Mrs. Marchmont will hate me for being in at this, but there’s
+nothing else for it.’
+
+Softly they went downstairs, and the slumbering inmates of the rambling
+old house knew nothing of what was going on. Without hesitation or
+explanation they went straight to Signor Oriole’s study.
+
+There the lamp was still burning; there Fulvia still sat, her hands
+folded one over the other on her knees, her eyes fixed on the opposite
+wall. She looked up with a hungry eagerness to be gone as they came
+in, and her eyes dilated with a haughty displeasure as she saw Richard
+Hamilton.
+
+‘Mrs. Marchmont,’ said he in the most matter-of-fact tone, ‘Signor
+Oriole tells me he is taking you to Sicily, and that you have excellent
+reasons for wishing to set off at once. If you will have a few moments’
+indulgence for us, we will harness the little carriage, and I will
+drive you to--to catch the London mail.’
+
+‘I will wait, but you will be quick?’ she said, as her expression again
+grew quieter. ‘I don’t want to be here when the day really begins, that
+is all.’
+
+‘When the day really begins I hope to be putting you in the train for
+King’s Cross,’ said he, as he left the room with Signor Oriole.
+
+How the thing was done with such incredible speed and silence and
+accuracy they never knew. Circumstances were favourable. All the
+household were in their deepest sleep. The stable and offices were away
+from the house. The matter was accomplished very soon. Signor Oriole
+returned to the house, took his daughter’s hand, and said ‘Come!’
+
+She rose and followed him. In the yard they found Hamilton throwing
+some shawls and rugs into the carriage, which was a low, open one, but
+had a box for the driver.
+
+‘Here,’ said he, ‘get in, Mrs. Marchmont. Put on your cloak--so; and
+wrap all these things about you’--he was doing it himself as fast as he
+could--‘for the morning air is sharp, and it will be cold on the open
+road.’
+
+He helped her in, and she mechanically submitted to everything he did.
+Signor Oriole got in beside her. Hamilton wrapped him too in a rug,
+got on to the box, and, not much caring now how much noise he made,
+whipped up the horse. In ten minutes they were nearly a mile away from
+West Wall, and by dint of good driving arrived at ---- Junction with
+ten minutes to spare, just as a wild primrose and purple sunrise was
+flaming over the violet wastes of the German Ocean, which rose and fell
+and sobbed and moaned under it like some living monster disturbed in
+its sleep.
+
+The few last hurried words were exchanged. Signor Oriole promised
+to write from London and tell all he intended to do. He swore that
+he would never lose sight of his friends in this Northern land; he
+would not forget them, he would not be silent to them. As for seeing
+them, that time alone would decide, and--he gave a quick side-glance
+at Fulvia, who was pacing about with head downcast and in utter
+abstraction, her only glances being occasionally in the direction from
+which the express ought to come.
+
+It did come at last. It made only a very brief stoppage at that small
+junction. There was an empty first-class compartment, into which the
+travellers got. At the last moment, as Hamilton, standing with bared
+head, looked at Fulvia and wished her good-bye, without even holding
+out his hand to intrude upon her grief, she roused for a moment, held
+out hers with an impulsive movement, and said:
+
+‘Good-bye, Mr. Hamilton. You have been a true friend to me to-day. I’ll
+never forget it.’
+
+‘Then say “a rivederci,”’ he besought her, with a sudden change of
+expression.
+
+‘Willingly--in a happier hour, if one should come to me--a rivederci.’
+
+He clasped her hand, and looked into her eyes, and dropped from the
+footboard, as the train was in motion. Soon it was out of sight.
+
+As he turned again to the outside of the station, the fleeting glory
+of that sunrise was over. The heaven was gray; every splendour had
+departed. From the leaden sky, a drizzling rain had begun to fall into
+a slate-coloured sea which moaned and growled like the ‘fierce old
+mother’ that she was.
+
+Hamilton collected all the rugs and shawls, folded them neatly into a
+bundle, and covered them up with a mackintosh. One he reserved to fold
+round his own knees as he drove back, in the teeth of a raw wind which
+not even August could make warm. His face was as gray as the day; his
+thoughts resembled both.
+
+‘So! She is gone! And gone for what, and to what? If only that d----l
+would die! But he won’t. I wonder what happened--I wonder what drove
+her to this? Something horrible, I haven’t a doubt--not a doubt! Oh,
+Lord, what a world it is--what a world! And how we are handicapped who
+have scruples about playing off our own bat and letting all the rest go
+hang. Hans didn’t mind, and so perhaps she is lost to me for ever.’
+
+It was seven o’clock when he drove into the stableyard of his sister’s
+house, and confronted the astonished youth who was Minna’s only
+man-servant, and whom horror and amaze at what he believed to have been
+the stealing of the property committed to his charge had reduced to
+such a state of imbecility that its reappearance only served to more
+thoroughly bewilder and terrify him. Hamilton threw the reins to him,
+bade him look to the horse, and went into the house, leaving him to
+recover as best he might from his stupor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+It was still long before noon when Signor Oriole and his charge arrived
+in London. Some little conversation they had had on the journey on the
+most prosaic, matter-of-fact details, as to where they should go, and
+when, and how. They had decided upon travelling by train to Naples, and
+thence taking the steamer to Catania, a little to the north of which
+lay the small estate which had come to Signor Giuseppe. They were to
+stay in London for the rest of the day, and for that night. It was
+with some little difficulty that he persuaded Fulvia to do this; her
+wide-open eyes betrayed no look of drowsiness, and he at least could
+see the expression of suspense and restrained excitement on her face.
+She had told him nothing of what had finally driven her to him, and
+made her so firmly bent on escaping from her husband’s house, from West
+Wall--yea, even from England. When he suggested the rest in London a
+blank look came over her face.
+
+‘Could we not take the tidal train to Calais to-night?’ she asked
+imploringly.
+
+‘We certainly could, but I do not wish either you or myself to break
+down on the journey,’ he said; ‘and, mia cara, if you will let me sleep
+for a few hours, I am at your service.’
+
+‘Oh, forgive me, padre mio! Do not let us speak of it again. We will
+stay here all night and leave to-morrow morning.’
+
+Thus it was arranged. Signor Giuseppe employed part of the day in
+certain business transactions with his bankers, and in laying in
+a stock of some travelling requisites whose very existence Fulvia
+appeared to have forgotten. She went with him everywhere; she seemed
+nervous and afraid to be left alone in the hotel, and told him she
+could not possibly sleep, even if she tried to do so. He let her have
+her way, and the long day wore on, and he insisted upon her going to
+bed early and trying to sleep.
+
+Their rooms were next door to one another, and he promised that when
+she was in bed he would go and say good-night to her. She presently
+called him through the door which joined the rooms. He wondered whether
+she would tell him now, as he went into the room and saw her lying
+still and white-looking, still with those eyes so painfully wide open.
+
+But Fulvia did not speak on that subject. She held his hand for awhile,
+as he sat beside her bed, and looked at him, and said:
+
+‘I don’t think I shall go to sleep. I wish I had gone to a doctor and
+asked for a sleeping-draught. Promise not to shut that door, will you?’
+
+‘Certainly, darling. It shall be open all night,’ he assured her, and
+in a few minutes, to his profound relief, he saw the eyelids, heavy and
+purple with grief and long vigil, fall. Once or twice she raised them
+again. Once she pressed his hand, and carried it to her lips. Then the
+clasp of her fingers upon his gradually relaxed. By-and-by he saw that
+Fulvia slept--a natural sleep.
+
+‘Thank God!’ he said to himself. ‘I should have been afraid to leave
+London if I had known she had had no rest.’
+
+Still without any explanation having been made, they left London on
+the following morning. Now that she had rested, and looked strong and
+steady, if pale and unspeakably sad, he was ready to agree to her
+request that they should only break the journey once before getting
+to Naples--at Milan. She never swerved from this resolution, and they
+were, as it seemed, very soon far away from England, had traversed
+France, had travelled through the snows of Switzerland, all crowded
+with tourists of every description, had at last reached the southern
+side of the Alps, and heard their own tongue again. As the heat grew
+greater, the number of English and American excursionists diminished.
+The burning plain of Lombardy was behind them, and on a still,
+breathless, sultry evening they entered the great desolate space of
+the Milan station, coldly orderly under a glare of electric light.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was after they had dined that evening, and had left the coffee-room
+and were seated in Fulvia’s room, with windows open to let in any stray
+breath of air which might be wandering about, that she said to him
+deliberately:
+
+‘Padre mio, I am going to tell you about it. I could not speak before,
+and I do not wish to speak now, but still less do I wish to have to
+speak after we have got home. Let us leave all this behind us, and
+begin everything afresh.’
+
+‘Yes, child, it will be much the best if you can tell me about it now,’
+
+‘It was thus, then. You know the kind of life which for five years I
+had led and had made no sign--no outward sign, that is. I thought I
+was so strong. I began to pride myself upon it, and to feel a brutal
+gladness in it, as if I were above and outside the world of other
+people and might despise them. I did despise a great many of them,
+women especially, whom I used to hear loudly mourning and lamenting
+because they had not got everything they wanted, not because they were
+like me, without anything I wanted, and forced to live a life I hated.
+I used to wonder how they would conduct themselves if they were really
+tried. I believed that I had been so tried that there was nothing in
+the world to move me, or tempt me, or make me waver from the path on
+which I was walking. Then----’
+
+‘Then Riemann came and made love to you,’ he interrupted her. ‘Well?’
+
+‘No, he did not come and make love to me. If he had done that at once,
+and had really begun to make love to me, as so many others had tried
+to do, I should have smiled, as I always did, and brushed him away at
+once, as such creatures always can be brushed away by the women who
+do not want them. But it all grew so gradually that I did not know
+what was coming. I really was blind for a long time. I swear to you
+that until he came to West Wall, quite unexpectedly, he had never
+spoken a word of love to me. There was something--something deep down
+in my heart. I thought it was gratitude to him for his kindness, his
+services, his perfect delicacy during a very miserable illness of my
+husband’s when we were on the Riviera, before we came to England in the
+early spring.
+
+‘I should have loved him, I think, and should have confessed it to
+myself, if he had never said anything, just because it would have been
+much more respectful and chivalrous than the conduct of those other
+creatures who think a miserable woman can cure her misery, and wishes
+to do so, in their society.... But that did not last long. I don’t
+know how it came about in the end, only I found that he did love me,
+though he had been so long without saying anything about it. I wasn’t
+shocked--somehow, I was not even surprised, but the horror of it was
+that, instead of being utterly contemptuous, as I always had been
+before, I was glad: heaven seemed opened to me.
+
+‘It went on--of course it was easy for it to go on, after it had once
+begun; and insensibly I began to think, not that it was impossible,
+but to ask myself why there should be anything wrong in it--why I
+should not have done with all that--and go away with him, as he
+wanted me to, and travel with him, and share his life, and know some
+happiness, and feel what it is to live, before I should have grown
+too old to care about anything. What is the use of telling lies about
+such things? Besides, I never could tell lies, either to myself or
+to anyone else. I knew that it was impossible to be more unhappy and
+dissatisfied and hungry for everything I could not get than I was then,
+living an exemplary life, doing my duty and earning the respect of all
+who knew me. What was their respect to me? I am sure I did not care
+anything about it. As for resignation, that is utterly unnatural, and
+even wrong, for anyone in my position. But I need not tell you all I
+thought. It would take hours, and do no good, and not explain anything,
+after all. The more I argued with myself, the more convinced I grew
+that there would be nothing wrong in reversing the picture, and trying
+what going away and leaving my duty undone might bring for me.
+
+‘Then he became ill--you know. I had borne a great many of these
+illnesses before. I don’t know that this was any worse than the others
+had been, or any different. It was much the same as usual, I believe.
+It was I who was changed, and to whom everything which had so far got
+to seem deadly indifferent, beneath the trouble of noticing, now seemed
+like stabs, like stings, like mortal insults and wounds--intolerable
+tortures which no one was called upon to endure, who could escape from
+them. I quite made up my mind. I was perfectly reckless. I resolved to
+do it. I had to put off a promised meeting with Hans from the morning
+of that day--you know which--till the evening. I told him to be at the
+pond after nine. I did not know what would happen before then. The
+doctor came--you know, the man from London. I knew what he would say.
+
+‘I did not know what he would do, whether he would stay all night at
+the Hall, or go to Mr. Brownrigg’s, or go home again. I had ordered a
+room to be got ready for him, in case he should stay. He decided in the
+end to dine with me and Mr. Brownrigg, whom I invited to remain, and to
+stay all night at Mr. Brownrigg’s. There was nothing interesting at the
+Hall, as he soon saw. They saw my husband, and had a consultation, and
+then called me, and went through all that solemn farce again which they
+always play. He was very ill, but they did not think him in immediate
+danger--the chief thing was to keep his mind tranquil, and let him
+feel as little depressed as possible--amuse him, in short, as well as
+might be! Padre mio, I ask you, what did I, what could I, care whether
+he were tranquil or agitated, cheerful or depressed? I said nothing to
+them, of course. They knew all about it.
+
+‘They cast down their eyes as they spoke, and did not look at each
+other, nor very much at me. I said yes and no, and felt such an immense
+ennui--indescribable. Then we dined together. They knew all about the
+skeleton belonging to me, which was not even in a cupboard, but quite
+visible, in a room only a few doors away; but we talked and laughed.
+Is there any moment in our lives in which we cannot talk and laugh?
+Sir Simon Sykes is quite witty; he told us some most laughable stories
+about patients and doctors in London, at which even I was amused, and
+which made Mr. Brownrigg cry, “Capital! capital!” and laugh till the
+tears ran down his cheeks. Dinner lasted rather a long time. I intended
+to go to him before I went away for ever. At last they had gone away,
+and then I turned into his room, to give the usual look round, so as
+to get it done with, without seeming remarkable. It was nearly ten
+o’clock. “In a few minutes,” I thought, “all will be settled, and I can
+go.”
+
+‘In his room I found the nurse, to whom I had had almost to go on my
+knees a few days before to prevail upon her to stay. She had moved as
+far away from him as she could, and was sitting, where he could see
+her, with her fingers in her ears, looking sullen and obstinate. She
+had often complained, but I had never seen her look like that before.
+As soon as I came in, she got up, and said:
+
+‘“Mrs. Marchmont, I am sorry to inconvenience you, but I have to tell
+you that I cannot remain any longer to nurse Mr. Marchmont. I don’t
+know what he is or where he comes from, but though I have nursed all
+kinds of men of the roughest sort--navvies, and coal-heavers, and
+drunkards, and as bad as bad can be, in the hospitals, I never in all
+my time have heard such words as he has been pouring out upon me for
+the last hour. I leave to-morrow. I shall explain to my matron, and if
+she dismisses me I can’t help it. I will not stay here!”
+
+‘Of course, there was only one thing that I could say to her. I knew
+she spoke the truth; I could not be angry with her. I believe I spoke
+with a smile, for the thought in my heart was, “Then we are both going
+away. How happy we are!” I said, “I am very sorry you have had such
+an unpleasant experience. I do not ask you to remain. You can go.
+Good-night.” She looked at me for a moment, and then went away. He had
+not spoken. As soon as she had gone, and the door was shut, he turned
+to me and asked where I had been all that time. With the doctors, I
+told him. They had both gone.
+
+‘“Ah! and have you decided on a plan for my destruction?” he asked me,
+with the sort of laugh that he had sometimes.
+
+‘“I am sorry to say that, when we did speak of you, the only thing
+that was discussed was the best means for prolonging your life,” I
+replied. I had never felt like that before; I had never felt him to be
+so wicked, nor myself so wronged, as I did at that moment. In the next
+everything was changed.
+
+‘“You hate me--me, who have done everything for you. You wish me dead.
+And I married you when no one else would have married you. I raised
+you from beggary--practical beggary--to this!” I heard what he said,
+and, though it is so monstrous, I knew in an instant that he believed
+what he said--he was firmly convinced of it. He was sure that he had
+really done me an unexampled benefit in taking me away from my shabby,
+poverty-stricken home and my equivocal surroundings, and in making me
+a rich man’s wife--his own legal, unassailable wife.’ She laughed, and
+there was a sound of bitter tears in her laugh.
+
+‘I laugh now. I laughed then, too. I could not help it. It was all
+so--funny, in a way. I had intended to answer him, to pour out upon him
+the whole torrent of my wrongs and my sufferings and my martyrdom; but
+as soon as he had spoken those words, and I saw that he really meant
+and believed them all, I knew it would be utterly useless. It would
+only waste time, and wear out my energies, so I said nothing of all
+that. I resolved that he should think me as bad as possible, that he
+should have every ground for appealing to the world and the law, when
+I had gone, and saying, “See how she has betrayed me! Set me free from
+her at once.” So I gathered myself together, and said,
+
+‘“You are perfectly right. I do hate you. I loathe you, and I wish with
+all my heart that you were dead. Then I should have a chance of being
+happy before I have grown too old and too warped and too ill-tempered
+to be capable of feeling what happiness is.”
+
+‘“Happiness--oh!” said he: “which of them is it, pray, whose sighs you
+wish to reward? That painter-fellow, with the sentimental eyes, or the
+Englishman with the starched cravat--your dear friend’s brother? It’s a
+race between them, as I have seen for some time, and I only am in the
+way.”
+
+‘I did not understand him altogether. I suppose it was just an
+additional insult thrown in. He wished to drag in Minna’s name because
+I love her, and say something offensive about her or about someone who
+belonged to her. I do not know whether I turned red or pale with anger.
+I felt a hot glow all over me, like a breath of air from a furnace. “I
+could be happier with a ploughboy, who was honest, than with you,” I
+said, “if one must have someone to be happy with. I don’t know why one
+should not be happy alone, feeling free and decent, and able to respect
+one’s self again, mind and body.”
+
+‘“You will never be happy, then, either with or without someone,” was
+his answer. “Never, while I am here. I am not dead yet, and I’m not
+going to die, whatever you may think; and as long as I live here, you
+are my wife--and here you have to stay. You can do nothing to help
+yourself--nothing at all.”
+
+‘Two thoughts came into my mind at the same moment, I think. First,
+that I had so behaved that this creature trusted me; despite all he
+had done to crush every good feeling in me, he had not been able to
+crush out my truth and my honesty. While he accused me in one breath
+of wishing him dead and of being in a plot to bring about his death,
+in the next he told me I could never be free while he lived, because
+he took it for granted that I should never desert him. That was one
+thought, and the next was, as my eyes fell upon a table on which stood
+some drugs, that in one moment I could put him out of the way, still
+his horrible voice, kill his abominable power for ever.
+
+‘I did not speak for a moment. The two thoughts were fighting together
+in my mind. I went up to the table, and took from it the bottle of
+morphia and the little needle for injecting it, and I went up to him.
+
+‘The last thing the doctors had said was that he was to have morphia in
+moderate quantities. I knew exactly how much. So long as the paroxysms
+of violent pain lasted it was to be administered. I went up to him, as
+I tell you. I suppose there must have been some change in my look or on
+my face, for he suddenly said, in a voice of suspicion and fear:
+
+‘“What have you got there? What do you want? Why do you look at me
+like that?”
+
+‘“You know what this is,” said I; “it is the morphia which they have
+been giving you, to take away your pain and make you sleep. You have
+behaved in such a manner to Nurse Agnes that--you heard what she
+said--she has gone away, and does not intend to enter your room again.
+You have treated your servant Morrison so that he is in much the same
+frame of mind. I do not know whether he will come, even if I were to
+go to him and beg him to do so. You have, as usual, left it all to me,
+because no one else will come near you. Do you think that I have a
+spirit more slavish and more contemptible than that of these servants?
+I have just told you that I loathe you and wish you were dead. By the
+order of your doctors, and especially of this great authority from
+London, you are to have an injection of this stuff in your arm every
+night at bedtime, and as much oftener as may be necessary. You think
+I shall endure everything, I see. You think I shall only talk about
+my unhappiness--never rebel against it. You are forced to honour me
+and trust me in your heart, you horrible coward! while you abuse me
+and tell shameful lies of me with your lips. Do you think I shall bear
+it for ever? What if I choose to put an end to it now? You could not
+prevent my doing so. You are weak and helpless and paralyzed. I am
+strong and young and able to move where I will and do all I wish to,
+physically.
+
+‘“I can do just what I like with you as you lie there. I can fill this
+syringe with the quantity of morphia prescribed by the doctor, and so
+secure you some hours of rest and forgetfulness of your pain, or I
+can put into it three times as much as the doctor ordered, and so put
+you into a sleep from which you will never awaken. Do you understand?
+Now, this instant, I can do it. Reflect well and speak honestly, if you
+can, for once in your life. Do you think it would be very strange if
+I decided to give you too much? Do you really think I am incapable of
+it? Do you think also that I am not quite clever enough to escape any
+disagreeable consequences of doing it? Bah! speak the truth. Tell me,
+which do you think would be my best plan--from my point of view, not
+from yours?”
+
+‘Then he was really terrified, and showed the abject coward which in
+his soul he is. He began to whine and cry and whimper, and to tell me
+how he loved me, and that it was because he saw that other people loved
+me also, and he could not bear it, that he was jealous and fretful
+and irritable. He said he had always adored me from the very first;
+he said a great many things the hearing of which made me sick with
+rage. Then he whined and prayed and cried, and begged me to spare his
+life, and then he said he trusted me and always had trusted me. He was
+so pitiful, so abject, so utterly contemptible, that I began to feel
+as if killing him would be like stepping on some crawling beetle or
+caterpillar and killing it--an ugly, repulsive little object, padre
+mio, but quite pitiably helpless when confronted with a human being....
+And then it was true: he did trust me. I never yet deceived anyone
+who trusted in me. I became recklessly contemptuous of all that might
+happen. I took my resolution. Physically I would spare him, morally I
+would slay him. I was a little mad, I think, or was I sane then, and
+am I a little mad now?’
+
+She looked at him inquiringly.
+
+‘You are sane enough now, carissima, and you were sane then. I see
+nothing mad in anything you have said or done,’ her father told her.
+
+‘Perhaps.’ She sighed profoundly, then went on: ‘I said to him,
+“Listen; I am going to give you the hypodermic injection; just as much
+as the doctor has ordered, and no more. It appears to me that I am
+weak and foolish to neglect the opportunity which the gods afford me,
+but I will do it. Then, as soon as you are asleep and unable to insult
+anyone, I will call your servant and ask him to sit with you, and then
+I shall leave this house, never to return to it. I will not tell you
+where I am going, nor to whom. I am going to be happy. In spite of what
+you say and of what you think, I am going to be happy and free, even
+though you are here, alive, and I am married to you.”
+
+‘He stared at me, and said: “I will not have any of your morphia. I
+choose to be awake. I do not want my servant; I want you, and you must
+sit with me, not he. I won’t be drugged to sleep that you may go to
+your lover.”
+
+‘“You cannot help yourself, mio caro,” I said to him. It was the first
+time in all those years that I had called him so. “I am going to leave
+you; that is all you need to know.” I took his arm, and he could not
+resist. I could have shrieked and shuddered merely to touch him, but
+I went through with it all. I measured the dose, and my hand did not
+shake for an instant. “You see,” I said, “so many drops: watch me while
+I drop them--so.”
+
+‘And when it was ready I inserted the needle, gave the injection,
+and replaced the things on the table. Then I waited a little while.
+That was the worst of all. It was hideous. He tried to awake, not
+to succumb to the dose. He could not. He talked to me quickly and
+angrily, and I did not stop my ears. In spite of his efforts, the
+words began to stammer on his lips, his eyes glazed and closed. He was
+asleep--unconscious.
+
+‘“Good-bye,” I said to him mockingly. Then I rang the bell, and
+Morrison answered it. “Can you sit with Mr. Marchmont for a few hours,
+Morrison?” I asked. “He will now sleep for some time, and I must have
+rest, if I am to remain with him while he is awake.”
+
+‘Morrison at once agreed, and took his place by the bedside. I wished
+him good-night and went away.
+
+‘I went to my room, rang for my maid, and told her she could go to
+bed. I did not want anything more, and would undress myself. Then the
+moments seemed hours, while I tore off my ornaments, and my evening
+dress, and my satin shoes, and seized upon these dark things, and this
+bonnet and veil--I will buy some other things here, carissimo, and
+give these to the chambermaid. I was in a wild fever. I saw that it
+was nearly half-past eleven. Hans must have been waiting two hours and
+a half. Never mind. He would forgive me as soon as he knew, and his
+recompense should be my whole life. Why do you look at me in that way?’
+she added quickly.
+
+‘His recompense!’ Signor Giuseppe repeated after her, and laid his hand
+for a moment on her head.
+
+‘Don’t, darling, don’t!’ said Fulvia, almost sharply. ‘Wait till I
+have done, or I shall not be able to finish it. Though it seemed
+an eternity, I don’t think I was five minutes in undressing and
+redressing, and I did such a lot of things: locked up all my jewellery
+and put the key of my dressing-case into an envelope and addressed it
+to--its owner, and several other things. Then I stole downstairs, and
+got out of the house, and flew along the park towards the boat-house
+and the pond. The moon had come out, and gave me some light. I was
+bent upon getting there, hearing his voice, throwing myself into his
+arms. And yet, even as I flew along the path, even in that short
+time, there came a thought into my mind which all at once caused me
+to stand still. It was this, that I was going to give away what was
+not mine--my name and my fame, my honour and my honesty. They were
+not his--my husband’s--oh, don’t suppose that I was ever weak enough
+for one moment to think that they were! If there had been only him to
+consider, or only me! But there are always so many things. I don’t
+know why it came to me then; but I knew all at once that this self of
+mine, of which I was going to dispose so arbitrarily, was not really
+mine. Nothing is really ours to which we have given others a claim by
+a certain way of living and behaving and conducting ourselves. It was
+not my own thing--it belonged to you, and to Minna, and to poor little
+Rhoda even, and to everyone to whom my life heretofore had said, “This
+is what I am--you may trust me,” and who would ever after be obliged to
+feel and say, “She lied to us.” Perhaps my being able to stop and think
+of that, and consider about it, then, showed me to be a cold-hearted
+creature. I don’t think I am cold-hearted by nature,’ said Fulvia,
+in a voice whose pathos wrung her hearer’s heart. ‘But--well, I put
+it away from me. I went on; I said, “I have promised Hans too. He has
+a claim as well.” But the eagerness was gone. I felt the taste of the
+dust and ashes. It was not that I was afraid. I don’t know how to
+explain it; I will not try. I will tell you what happened. I arrived
+at last at the place. I did not see anyone, though the moon was up. A
+terrible fear took possession of me. It was all so horrible. Where was
+he? Certainly not outside. I went into the boat-house at last. It was
+so dark there that I could see nothing. I called, “Hans!” I had to call
+once or twice, before at last he answered. He had been worn out with
+waiting, and had fallen asleep. At last I heard a movement, and his
+voice said, “Yes?” “Come outside,” said I, “where it is light. I must
+explain to you.” He rose from the bench on which he had been lying, and
+followed me outside. “Hans!” I said, and held out my hands. “You told
+me to be here after nine,” he said. “I was here before. I had given you
+up. I thought you were fooling me.” “Oh, Hans, I could not help it. It
+has been so awful,” I told him. “Don’t look at me like that--so coldly,
+so cruelly. What have I done?” I asked, and my heart was growing every
+moment colder. He shivered too. I was frightened.
+
+‘“Why did you not come sooner?” he asked. “How can one arrange anything
+at this time of night?”
+
+‘“Oh, darling, there is nothing to arrange,” I exclaimed. “I am here. I
+have left him for ever and ever. I shall never go back there any more.
+It is all over. I have no one but you. Listen, Hans!” and then I told
+him, in a few words, what had happened. He grew quite still and cold as
+I spoke, with that stillness which one feels all through one, and which
+is so terrible. When I had done, he looked at me, and said in a strange
+voice, “You thought of murdering him? Good God!” and no more.
+
+‘Then I knew that my hour was come. I knew I had risked everything, cut
+myself off from everything, and broken with everything, to be, as you
+once said to me, at the mercy of a _farceur_. I did not wait; I
+suddenly pushed him away from me, and stood straight up, and said “Go!
+You are no better than he is. You are just the same. Leave me. Go home,
+and _leave_ me here.”
+
+‘He was very much startled. He seemed to awaken from a dream, and a
+flash came into his eyes, and he sprang towards me again, and would
+have taken me in his arms.
+
+‘“Leave you, Fulvia! Never, by God! Come to me. Come away with me.
+I care for nothing if I have you.” Never had I heard his voice with
+such a tone. Never had I seen his eyes with that look in them. Had he
+so met me at first, I should have been his beyond recall and beyond
+repentance. But it had all gone--all the belief, and all the love, and
+all the dream had vanished. They were no more. He begged, he prayed,
+he entreated, he conjured me. If he had never loved me before, he did
+then. Nothing that he did or said made me waver. It was no virtue of
+mine--there was no more passion left in me. There was no answer in my
+heart. I scarcely spoke, till at last I felt I must make an end of it,
+so I said a few cutting words, and asked if he were a poltroon that
+he tormented me so, after what I had said. At that he seemed at last
+to understand. He turned on his heel and went away. I was alone--quite
+alone. I don’t know what time it was. I don’t know how long I stayed
+there. I am sure I don’t know what I thought. Everything seemed to have
+come to an end, and I said to myself, “Ah, if I could lie down here and
+die.” But I knew that if I did lie down I should not die, because I am
+strong; I should only sleep, and waken again to the bitter world, and
+all its lies and all the horror of having to act a part. Life plays
+with us as a cat plays with a mouse. It torments us as long as it can,
+and at last strikes us down, and opens the grave for us.
+
+‘It was after a long time, I suppose, that I at last thought of you,
+oh Beppo! and the thought was like a ray of light in the blackness.
+One moment before I had been standing by the side of the water, feeling
+that there was nothing for me to do but to plunge into it. Because,
+what could there be for anyone like me? Unless I had someone to go to?’
+
+She stopped and looked at him, all the horror of that moment
+reappearing in her eyes. Signor Giuseppe knew very well what must have
+passed through her mind as she stood there, fully conscious of all
+the pitfalls which this naughty world prepares and has in readiness
+for such as she, if such as she once break through the ring-fence of
+conventional propriety which fences them in. Spoiled for humble work,
+not in will, but by the hothouse life of luxury, which had stamped her
+with the stamp of fashion and distinction in outward appearance, devoid
+of friends, without money, without ‘reference’--where could she have
+hidden her misery? Where would she not have been speedily reduced to
+the alternative of starvation, suicide, or dishonour? Society makes no
+provision for exceptional cases--its code is that there must not be any
+exceptional cases, and that such cases have themselves to thank for
+their situation.
+
+‘For all my awful wretchedness, I shuddered at the thought of killing
+myself,’ Fulvia went on. ‘Have you not noticed, padre mio, how
+much more ready these still, cold Northerners are to put an end to
+themselves than we, who seem to feel so much more? Our thoughts and
+our feelings are so much less complex than theirs, and violence and
+interference with the course of nature are so much more foreign to us.
+Don’t you think so?’
+
+‘Oh yes, child! It is so much of a fact to me that I have ceased even
+to think of it as remarkable. Well?’
+
+‘Well, it all comes to an end: nothing grand, nothing heroic, or
+violent, or tragic. I thought of you, as I said, and I asked myself,
+“Would Beppo rather that I should go to him and cast myself on his care
+and love, and shake him out of his quiet, contented life, and drag him
+about with me--a wretched, ruined, unhappy woman--or that I should
+bring all to an end now, in this pond?” In an instant, in a flash of
+light, I knew what you would think and would feel. I turned away. I
+felt so bruised, so broken, so crushed, that I could hardly crawl
+along. I wandered about, looking at the house till I saw the light in
+your window and knew that you were up. And at last I took courage to go
+up to where I saw you standing, and--all the rest you know.’
+
+‘It is the best that could have been done,’ he told her gently.
+
+Fulvia was leaning back, utterly exhausted, in her chair. He stroked
+her hands softly, and there was a long silence, till at last she opened
+her eyes, and, looking at him fully, and with love unspeakable and
+trust unbounded, said:
+
+‘I will try to make you as happy and as contented as you were with
+Minna. I will never think of anyone else. You know I can carry things
+out when I wish to do it; and, oh, how I wish it now!’
+
+Quite overcome, Signor Oriole had risen from his chair, and was walking
+about the room, clearing his throat every now and then. Fulvia suddenly
+sprang from hers, and interrupted him in his walk to and fro, put her
+hands on his shoulders, and said:
+
+‘You will trust me to try, will you not?’
+
+The next moment she was lying in his arms, weeping in one wild,
+unquenchable flood all the tears due to her outraged innocence, her
+blighted youth, her darkened future; and in spite of it all--in spite
+of the agony, of the hopelessness, of the bitter hardness of it
+all--there was, deep down in both hearts, the consciousness, unspoken,
+unformulated, but felt, that at this moment the healing of the gaping
+wounds had begun, and that the future might bring entire restoration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+Only three years have passed since that night when Fulvia made
+confession to her father of what had happened. They pursued their
+journey South on the following day, and presently arrived at what was
+to be their home.
+
+There, in profoundest quiet, they live, returning more and more to the
+customs and the habits of their own land, throwing off more and more
+the stamp of foreign life and an existence amongst aliens. They are not
+without their joys, and they have at least rest for their souls.
+
+Marchmont still lives; still hangs on to his fretful, joyless
+existence. No word has ever passed between him and his wife. She has
+not asked for a separation; he has not dared to suggest her to return
+to him. Neither money nor written words have ever passed between them.
+He has had himself conveyed to London; and his house is presided over
+by a widowed sister, from Australia.
+
+Letters pass between the Sicilian _castello_ and the old English
+country house, and Minna thinks, from the tone of them, that perhaps
+after a little time she may broach the project which is at present the
+desire of her heart--a journey to Catania, and beyond, to see those
+two who hold in her heart the same places as her brother Richard, and
+her niece Rhoda, to whom she has to be mother. Up to now she has not
+dared to hint at it, so intensely strong was the desire for solitude
+and rest breathed through every one of Fulvia’s infrequent letters, and
+echoed by those of her father. But Minna waits, and says, ‘The day will
+come.’
+
+Hans Riemann started off rather abruptly on his tour to the Caucasus,
+with the firm intention of remaining away for a long time.
+
+Signora Dietrich is noted for her works of charity, and for her
+rigid, unbending adherence to the most strictly religious life which
+can be led by one who is not actually in a cloister. Her house is a
+resort of some of the most accomplished of the Roman clergy, and it
+is known that, in a quiet way, she does an immense amount of work
+for the Church. She is a clever woman, and her life at present is a
+highly successful one. Intrigue, and the management of other people’s
+affairs, and interference with them, are dependent on their subjects’
+characters; undirected, they are apt to get into narrow grooves,
+and the result of their labours is not, in that case, productive of
+unmixed good--at least, to the mind of the vulgar--but manipulated by
+the hands of authority, by such a Church as that of Rome, with proper
+consideration and proper discipline, there is no knowledge of what
+value they may become to their superiors, nor what satisfaction and
+content they may secure for themselves.
+
+For such a road in life Signora Dietrich was born; if she entered the
+right path somewhat late, she at least strives to make up in zeal and
+mature intelligence the wasted years which slipped by before she had
+found her vocation.
+
+
+                                THE END.
+
+                 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
+
+
+
+
+    Telegraphic Address:
+      _Sunlooks, London_.
+                               _21 Bedford Street, W.C.
+                                      November 1892._
+
+                               A LIST OF
+
+                        Mr WILLIAM HEINEMANN’S
+
+                             Publications
+
+                                  AND
+
+                           Forthcoming Works
+
+                           _The Books mentioned in this List can
+                           be obtained_ to order _by any Bookseller
+                           if not in stock, or will be sent
+                           by the Publisher post free on receipt
+                           of price_.
+
+
+
+
+Index of Authors.
+
+
+        PAGE
+
+  Alexander, xiii
+
+  Arbuthnot, viii
+
+  Atherton, xiii
+
+
+  Baddeley, iv
+
+  Balestier, xiii
+
+  Barrett, ix
+
+  Behrs, iii
+
+  Bendall, xvi
+
+  Björnson, xi, xiii, xv
+
+  Bowen, v
+
+  Brown, viii
+
+  Brown and Griffiths, xvi
+
+  Buchanan, viii, ix, x, xiv
+
+  Butler, v
+
+
+  Caine, viii, xii
+
+  Caine, xvi
+
+  Cambridge, ix, xii
+
+  Chester, vii
+
+  Clarke, ix
+
+  Colomb, iii
+
+  Compayre, iii
+
+  Couperus, xi
+
+
+  Davidson, v
+
+  Dawson, xvi
+
+  De Quincey, vii
+
+
+  Eeden, vii
+
+  Ellwanger, vii
+
+  Ely, viii
+
+
+  Farrar, vii
+
+  Fitch, v
+
+  Forbes, iii
+
+  Fothergill, ix
+
+  Franzos, xi
+
+  Frederic, vi, xii
+
+
+  Garner, vii
+
+  Garnett, vi
+
+  Gilchrist, ix
+
+  Gore, xvi
+
+  Gosse, vii, ix
+
+  Gray, vii
+
+  Gray (Maxwell), ix
+
+  Griffiths, xvi
+
+
+  Hall, xvi
+
+  Harland, xiii
+
+  Hardy, xii
+
+  Heine, vi
+
+  Henderson (Major), iii
+
+  Henderson, xiv
+
+  Howard, x
+
+  Hughes, v
+
+  Hungerford, x, xiii
+
+
+  Ibsen, xv
+
+  Irving, xv
+
+  Ingersoll, viii
+
+
+  Jæger, vii, xv
+
+  Jeaffreson, iii
+
+
+  Kimball, xvi
+
+  Kipling and Balestier, ix
+
+
+  Lanza, xiii
+
+  Le Caron, iv
+
+  Lee, x
+
+  Leland, xvi
+
+  Lie, xi
+
+  Lowe, iii, vi
+
+  Lynch, xiii
+
+
+  Maartens, x
+
+  Maeterlinck, xv
+
+  Maude, iii
+
+  Maupassant, xi
+
+  Maurice, iii
+
+  Mitford, xiii
+
+  Murray, iii
+
+
+  Norris, ix
+
+
+  Ouida, ix
+
+
+  Palacio-Valdés, xi
+
+  Pearce, x
+
+  Pennell, vi
+
+  Philips, xiv
+
+  Phelps, xiii
+
+  Pinero, xiv
+
+
+  Rawnsley, iii
+
+  Renan, iv
+
+  Richter, vii
+
+  Riddell, ix
+
+  Rives, x
+
+  Roberts (C.G.D.), viii
+
+  Roberts (F. von), xi
+
+  Robinson, xiv
+
+
+  Salaman (M. C.), vii
+
+  Salaman (J. S.), vi
+
+  Scudamore, iii
+
+  Serao, xi
+
+  Sienkiewicz, xi
+
+
+  Tasma, ix, x, xii
+
+  Terry, xv
+
+  Thurston, xvi
+
+  Tolstoy, iii, xi, xv
+
+  Tree, xv
+
+
+  Valera, xi
+
+
+  Warden, xii
+
+  Waugh, iv
+
+  Weitemeyer, viii
+
+  West, v
+
+  Whistler, iii, vi
+
+  Whitman, vi, viii
+
+  Williams, vii
+
+  Wood, ix
+
+
+  Zangwill, vii, ix
+
+  Zola, xiii
+
+
+
+
+                        THE GREAT WAR OF 189-.
+                             _A FORECAST._
+                                  BY
+               REAR-ADMIRAL COLOMB, COL. MAURICE, R.A.,
+                   MAJOR HENDERSON, Staff College,
+                   CAPTAIN MAUDE, ARCHIBALD FORBES,
+                   CHARLES LOWE, D. CHRISTIE MURRAY,
+                           and F. SCUDAMORE.
+    In One Volume, large 8vo. With Numerous Illustrations, 12s. 6d.
+
+
+                               VICTORIA:
+                          QUEEN AND EMPRESS.
+                                  BY
+                        JOHN CORDY JEAFFRESON,
+                 Author of “The Real Lord Byron,” etc.
+      In Two Volumes, 8vo. With Portraits.      [_In the Press._
+
+
+                            SONGS ON STONE.
+                                  BY
+                         J. McNEILL WHISTLER.
+
+   A series of lithographic drawings in colour, by Mr. Whistler, will
+ appear from time to time in parts, under the above title. Each
+ containing four plates. The first issue of 200 copies will be sold
+ at Two Guineas net per part, by Subscription for the Series only.
+
+   _There will also be issued 50 copies on Japanese paper signed by
+ the artist, each Five Guineas net._
+
+
+                           REMINISCENCES OF
+                        COUNT LEO NICHOLAEVITCH
+                               TOLSTOI.
+                                  BY
+                             C. A. BEHRS,
+                    TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY
+                        PROFESSOR C. E. TURNER.
+            In One Volume, Crown 8vo.      [_In the Press._
+
+
+                       TWENTY-FIVE YEARS IN THE
+                            SECRET SERVICE.
+                     _THE RECOLLECTIONS OF A SPY._
+                                  BY
+                            MAJOR LE CARON.
+    In One Volume, 8vo. With Portraits and Facsimiles. Price 14_s._
+
+
+                        ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON:
+                    _A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND WORK_.
+                                  BY
+                       ARTHUR WAUGH, B.A. Oxon.
+                    WITH TWENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS,
+           _From Photographs Specially Taken for this Work,
+                         and Five Portraits_.
+    Second Edition, Revised. In One Volume, Demy 8vo, 10_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+                         STUDIES OF RELIGIOUS
+                               HISTORY.
+                                  BY
+                             ERNEST RENAN,
+                      LATE OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY.
+                    In One Volume, 8vo, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+                            QUEEN JOANNA I.
+                   OF NAPLES, SICILY, AND JERUSALEM;
+                   COUNTESS OF PROVENCE FORCALQUIER,
+                             AND PIEDMONT.
+                       _AN ESSAY ON HER TIMES._
+                                  BY
+                          ST. CLAIR BADDELEY.
+           Imperial 8vo. With Numerous Illustrations, 16_s._
+
+
+
+
+                          The Great Educators.
+
+     _A Series of Volumes by Eminent Writers, presenting in their
+          entirety “A Biographical History of Education.”_
+
+   _The Times._--“A Series of Monographs on ‘The Great Educators’
+    should prove of service to all who concern themselves with the
+    history, theory, and practice of education.”
+
+   _The Speaker._--“There is a promising sound about the title of
+    Mr. Heinemann’s new series, ‘The Great Educators.’ It should
+    help to allay the hunger and thirst for knowledge and culture
+    of the vast multitude of young men and maidens which our
+    educational system turns out yearly, provided at least with
+    an appetite for instruction.”
+
+        Each subject will form a complete volume, crown 8vo, 5s.
+
+                           _Now ready._
+
+ ARISTOTLE, and the Ancient Educational Ideals. Thomas
+    Davidson, M.A., LL.D.
+
+   _The Times._--“A very readable sketch of a very interesting
+    subject.”
+
+
+ LOYOLA, and the Educational System of the Jesuits. By Rev.
+    Thomas Hughes, S.J.
+
+   _Saturday Review._--“Full of valuable information.... If a
+    schoolmaster would learn how the education of the young can
+    be carried on so as to confer real dignity on those engaged
+    in it, we recommend him to read Mr. Hughes’ book.”
+
+
+ ALCUIN, and the Rise of the Christian Schools. By Professor
+    Andrew F. West, Ph.D.
+
+
+                           _In preparation._
+
+ ABELARD, and the Origin and Early History of Universities.
+    By Jules Gabriel Compayre, Professor in the Faculty of
+    Toulouse.
+
+ ROUSSEAU; or, Education according to Nature.
+
+ HERBART; or, Modern German Education.
+
+ PESTALOZZI; or, the Friend and Student of Children.
+
+ FROEBEL. By H. Courthope Bowen, M.A.
+
+ HORACE MANN, and Public Education in the United States. By
+    Nicholas Murray Butler, Ph.D.
+
+ BELL, LANCASTER, and ARNOLD; or, the English Education of
+    To-Day. By J. G. Fitch, LL.D., Her Majesty’s Inspector
+    of Schools.
+
+
+                          _Others to follow._
+
+ THE ARBITRATOR’S MANUAL. Under the London Chamber of
+    Arbitration. Being a Practical Treatise on the Power and Duties
+    of an Arbitrator, with the Rules and Procedure of the Court of
+    Arbitration, and the Forms. By Joseph Seymour Salaman,
+    Author of “Trade Marks,” etc. Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+ THE GENTLE ART OF MAKING ENEMIES. As pleasingly exemplified in
+    many instances, wherein the serious ones of this earth, carefully
+    exasperated, have been prettily spurred on to indiscretions and
+    unseemliness, while overcome by an undue sense of right. By J.
+    M’Neil Whistler. _A New Edition._ Pott 4to, half cloth,
+    10_s._ 6_d._
+                                                     [_Just ready._
+
+ THE JEW AT HOME. Impressions of a Summer and Autumn Spent
+    with Him in Austria and Russia. By Joseph Pennell. With
+    Illustrations by the Author. 4to, cloth, 5_s._
+                                                     [_Just ready._
+
+ THE NEW EXODUS. A Study of Israel in Russia. By Harold
+    Frederic. Demy 8vo, Illustrated, 16_s._
+                                                     [_Just ready._
+
+ THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS. By Sidney Whitman, Author
+    of “Imperial Germany.” In One Volume. Crown 8vo, 7_s._
+    6_d._
+
+ PRINCE BISMARCK. An Historical Biography. By Charles
+    Lowe, M.A. With Portraits. Crown 8vo, 6_s._
+                                                     [_Just ready._
+
+ THE WORKS OF HEINRICH HEINE. Translated by Charles Godfrey
+    Leland, M.A., F.R.L.S. (Hans Breitmann.) Crown 8vo, cloth,
+    5_s._ per Volume.
+
+    I. FLORENTINE NIGHTS, SCHNABELEWOPSKI, THE RABBI OF BACHARACH, and
+       SHAKESPEARE’S MAIDENS AND WOMEN.
+                                                          [_Ready._
+
+   _Times._--“We can recommend no better medium for making
+    acquaintance at first hand with ‘the German Aristophanes’ than the
+    works of Heinrich Heine, translated by Charles Godfrey Leland. Mr.
+    Leland manages pretty successfully to preserve the easy grace of
+    the original.”
+
+    II., III. PICTURES OF TRAVEL. 1823-1828. In Two Volumes.
+                                                          [_Ready._
+
+   _Daily Chronicle._--“Mr. Leland’s translation of ‘The Pictures of
+    Travel’ is one of the acknowledged literary feats of the age. As a
+    traveller Heine is delicious beyond description, and a volume which
+    includes the magnificent Lucca series, the North Sea, the memorable
+    Hartz wanderings, must needs possess an everlasting charm.”
+
+    IV. THE BOOK OF SONGS.
+                                                   [_In the Press._
+
+    V., VI. GERMANY. In Two Volumes.
+                                                          [_Ready._
+
+   _Daily Telegraph._--“Mr. Leland has done his translation in
+    able and scholarly fashion.”
+
+    VII., VIII. FRENCH AFFAIRS. In Two Volumes.
+                                                   [_In the Press._
+
+    IX. THE SALON.
+                                                 [_In preparation._
+
+ *** _Large Paper Edition, limited to 100 Numbered Copies.
+     Particulars on application._
+
+ LIFE OF HEINRICH HEINE. By Richard Garnett, LL.D. With
+    Portrait. Crown 8vo (uniform with the translation of
+    Heine’s Works).
+                                                 [_In preparation._
+
+ LITTLE JOHANNES. By Frederick van Eeden. Translated
+    from the Dutch by Clara Bell. With an Introduction by
+    Andrew Lang, illustrated.
+                                                 [_In preparation._
+
+ *** _Also a Large Paper Edition._
+
+ THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. By Professor R. L. Garner. Crown
+    8vo, 7_s._ 6_d._
+                                                     [_Just ready._
+
+ THE OLD MAIDS’ CLUB. By I. Zangwill, Author of “The
+    Bachelors’ Club.” Illustrated by F. H. Townsend. Crown
+    8vo, cloth, 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+ WOMAN--THROUGH A MAN’S EYEGLASS. By Malcolm C. Salaman.
+    With Illustrations by Dudley Hardy. Crown 8vo, cloth,
+    3_s._ 6_d._
+
+ GIRLS AND WOMEN. By E. Chester. Pott 8vo, cloth,
+    2_s._ 6_d._, or gilt extra, 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+ GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY. By Edmund Gosse, Author of
+    “Northern Studies,” &c. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, buckram, gilt
+    top, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+    *** _Large Paper Edition, limited to 100 Numbered Copies,
+    25s. net._
+
+ THE LIFE OF HENRIK IBSEN. By Henrik Jæger. Translated
+    by Clara Bell. With the Verse done into English from the
+    Norwegian Original by Edmund Gosse. Crown 8vo, cloth,
+    6_s._
+
+ DE QUINCEY MEMORIALS. Being Letters and other Records here
+    first Published, with Communications from Coleridge,
+    The Wordsworths, Hannah More, Professor
+    Wilson and others. Edited, with Introduction, Notes, and
+    Narrative, by Alexander H. Japp, LL.D., F.R.S.E. In two
+    volumes, demy 8vo, cloth, with portraits, 30_s._ net.
+
+ THE POSTHUMOUS WORKS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY. Edited with
+    Introduction and Notes from the Author’s Original MSS., by
+    Alexander H. Japp, LL.D, F.R.S.E., &c. Crown 8vo, cloth,
+    6_s._ each.
+
+    I. SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS. With other Essays.
+
+    II. CONVERSATION AND COLERIDGE. With other Essays.
+                                                 [_In preparation._
+
+ THE WORD OF THE LORD UPON THE WATERS. Sermons read by His
+    Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Germany, while at Sea on his
+    Voyages to the Land of the Midnight Sun. Composed by Dr.
+    Richter, Army Chaplain, and Translated from the German by
+    John R. McIlraith. 4to, cloth, 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+ THE HOURS OF RAPHAEL, IN OUTLINE. Together with the Ceiling
+    of the Hall where they were originally painted. By Mary E.
+    Williams. Folio, cloth, £2 2_s._ net.
+
+ THE PASSION PLAY AT OBERAMMERGAU, 1890. By F. W.
+    Farrar, D.D., F.R.S., Archdeacon and Canon of Westminster, &c.
+    &c. 4to, cloth, 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+ THE GARDEN’S STORY; or, Pleasures and Trials of an Amateur
+    Gardener. By G. H. Ellwanger. With an Introduction by
+    the Rev. C. Wolley Dod. 12mo, cloth, with Illustrations,
+    5_s._
+
+ IDLE MUSINGS: Essays in Social Mosaic. By E. Conder
+    Gray, Author of “Wise Words and Loving Deeds,” &c. &c. Crown
+    8vo, cloth, 6_s._
+
+ THE COMING TERROR. And other Essays and Letters. By Robert
+    Buchanan. Second Edition. Demy 8vo, cloth, 12_s._ 6_d._
+
+ ARABIC AUTHORS: A Manual of Arabian History and Literature.
+    By F. F. Arbuthnot, M.R.A.S., Author of “Early Ideas,”
+    “Persian Portraits,” &c. 8vo, cloth, 10_s._
+
+ THE LABOUR MOVEMENT IN AMERICA. By Richard T. Ely,
+    Ph.D., Associate in Political Economy, Johns Hopkins University.
+    Crown 8vo, cloth, 5_s._
+
+ THE LITTLE MANX NATION. (Lectures delivered at the Royal
+    Institution, 1891.) By Hall Caine, Author of “The
+    Bondman,” “The Scapegoat,” &c. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3_s._
+    6_d._; paper, 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+ NOTES FOR THE NILE. Together with a Metrical Rendering of the
+    Hymns of Ancient Egypt and of the Precepts of Ptahhotep (the oldest
+    book in the world). By Hardwicke D. Rawnsley, M. A. 16mo,
+    cloth, 5_s._
+
+ DENMARK: Its History, Topography, Language, Literature, Fine
+    Arts, Social Life, and Finance. Edited by H. Weitemeyer.
+    Demy 8vo, cloth, with Map, 12_s._ 6_d._
+
+    *** _Dedicated, by permission, to H.R.H. the Princess of Wales._
+
+ IMPERIAL GERMANY. A Critical Study of Fact and Character. By
+    Sidney Whitman. New Edition, Revised and Enlarged. Crown
+    8vo, cloth 2_s._ 6_d._; paper, 2_s._
+
+ THE CANADIAN GUIDE-BOOK. Part I. The Tourist’s and Sportsman’s
+    Guide to Eastern Canada and Newfoundland, including full
+    descriptions of Routes, Cities, Points of Interest, Summer Resorts,
+    Fishing Places, &c., in Eastern Ontario, The Muskoka District,
+    The St. Lawrence Region, The Lake St. John Country, The Maritime
+    Provinces, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. With an Appendix
+    giving Fish and Game Laws, and Official Lists of Trout and Salmon
+    Rivers and their Lessees. By Charles G. D. Roberts,
+    Professor of English Literature in King’s College, Windsor, N.S.
+    With Maps and many Illustrations. Crown 8vo. limp cloth, 6_s._
+
+    Part II. WESTERN CANADA. Including the Peninsula and Northern
+    Regions of Ontario, the Canadian Shores of the Great Lakes, the
+    Lake of the Woods Region, Manitoba and “The Great North-West,” The
+    Canadian Rocky Mountains and National Park, British Columbia, and
+    Vancouver Island. By Ernest Ingersoll. With Maps and many
+    Illustrations. Crown 8vo, limp cloth.        [_In preparation._
+
+ THE GENESIS OF THE UNITED STATES. A Narrative of the Movement
+    in England, 1605-1616, which resulted in the Plantation of North
+    America by Englishmen, disclosing the Contest between England and
+    Spain for the Possession of the Soil now occupied by the United
+    Slates of America; set forth through a series of Historical
+    Manuscripts now first printed, together with a Re-issue of Rare
+    Contemporaneous Tracts, accompanied by Bibliographical Memoranda,
+    Notes, and Brief Biographies. Collected, Arranged, and Edited by
+    Alexander Brown, F.R.H.S. With 100 Portraits, Maps, and
+    Plans. In two volumes. Royal 8vo, buckram, £3 13_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+
+
+                               Fiction.
+
+                           In Three Volumes.
+
+ THE HEAD OF THE FIRM. By Mrs. Riddell, Author of
+    “George Geith,” “Maxwell Drewett,” &c.
+                                                     [_Just ready._
+
+ THE TOWER OF TADDEO. A Novel. By Ouida, Author of “Two
+    Little Wooden Shoes,” &c.
+                                                     [_Just ready._
+
+ KITTY’S FATHER. By Frank Barrett. Author of “Lieutenant
+    Barnabas,” &c.
+                                                    [_In November._
+
+ CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO. By I. Zangwill, Author of “The
+    Old Maids’ Club,” &c.
+                                                     [_Just ready._
+
+ THE COUNTESS RADNA. By W. E. Norris, Author of
+    “Matrimony,” &c.
+                                                     [_In January._
+
+ ORIOLE’S DAUGHTER. A Novel. By Jessie Fothergill,
+    Author of “The First Violin,” &c.
+                                                    [_In February._
+
+ THE LAST SENTENCE. By Maxwell Gray, Author of “The
+    Silence of Dean Maitland,” &c.
+                                                       [_In March._
+
+                              In Two Volumes.
+
+ WOMAN AND THE MAN. A Love Story. By Robert Buchanan,
+    Author of “Come Live with Me and be My Love,” “The Moment After,”
+    “The Coming Terror,” &c.
+                                                 [_In preparation._
+
+ A KNIGHT OF THE WHITE FEATHER. By “Tasma,” Author of
+    “The Penance of Portia James,” “Uncle Piper of Piper’s Hill,” &c.
+                                                     [_Just ready._
+
+ A LITTLE MINX. By Ada Cambridge, Author of “A Marked Man,”
+    “The Three Miss Kings,” &c.
+                                                   [_In the Press._
+
+                               In One Volume.
+
+ THE NAULAHKA. A Tale of West and East. BY Rudyard Kipling and
+    Wolcott Balestier. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6_s._ Second Edition.
+                                                     [_Just ready._
+
+ THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. By Edmund Gosse. Crown 8vo, 5_s._
+                                                     [_Just ready._
+
+ AVENGED ON SOCIETY. By H. F. Wood, Author of “The
+    Englishman of the Rue Cain,” “The Passenger from Scotland Yard.”
+    Crown 8vo.
+                                                   [_In the Press._
+
+ THE DOMINANT SEVENTH. A Musical Story. By Kate Elizabeth Clarke.
+    Crown 8vo, cloth, 5_s._
+
+   _Speaker._--“A very romantic story.”
+
+
+ PASSION THE PLAYTHING. A Novel. By R. Murray Gilchrist.
+    Crown 8vo, cloth, 6_s._
+
+   _Athenæum._--“This well-written story must be read to be
+    appreciated.”
+
+
+
+
+                      The Crown Copyright Series.
+
+Mr. Heinemann has made arrangements with a number of the First and Most
+Popular English, American, and Colonial Authors which will enable him
+to issue a series of New and Original Works, to be known as The Crown
+Copyright Series, complete in One Volume, at a uniform price of Five
+Shillings each. These Novels will not pass through an Expensive Two or
+Three Volume Edition, but they will be obtainable at the Circulating
+Libraries, as well as at all Booksellers’ and Bookstalls.
+
+ ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN. By Amélie Rives, Author of
+    “The Quick or the Dead.”
+
+   _Scotsman._--“The literary work is highly artistic.... It has
+    beauty and brightness, and a kind of fascination which carries
+    the reader on till he has read to the last page.”
+
+ THE PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. By Tasma, Author of “Uncle
+    Piper of Piper’s Hill,” &c.
+
+   _Athenæum._--“A powerful novel.”
+
+   _Daily Chronicle._--“Captivating and yet tantalising, this
+    story is far above the average.”
+
+   _Vanity Fair._--“A very interesting story, morally sound, and
+    flavoured throughout with ease of diction and lack of strain.”
+
+ INCONSEQUENT LIVES. A Village Chronicle, shewing how certain
+    folk set out for El Dorado; what they attempted; and what they,
+    attained. By J. H. Pearce, Author of “Esther Pentreath,” &c.
+
+   _Saturday Review._--“A vivid picture of the life of Cornish
+    fisher-folk. It is unquestionably interesting.”
+
+   _Literary World._--“Powerful and pathetic ... from first to last
+    it is profoundly interesting. It is long since we read a story
+    revealing power of so high an order, marked by such evident
+    carefulness of workmanship, such skill in the powerful and yet
+    temperate presentation of passion, and in the sternly realistic
+    yet delicate treatment of difficult situations.”
+
+ A QUESTION OF TASTE. By Maarten Maartens, Author of “An
+    Old Maid’s Love,” &c.
+
+   _National Observer._--“There is more than cleverness; there is
+    original talent, and a good deal of humanity besides.”
+
+ COME LIVE WITH ME AND BE MY LOVE. By Robert Buchanan, Author of
+    “The Moment After,” “The Coming Terror,” &c.
+
+   _Globe._--“Will be found eminently readable.”
+
+   _Daily Telegraph._--“We will conclude this brief notice by
+    expressing our cordial admiration of the skill displayed in
+    its construction, and the genial humanity that has inspired
+    its author in the shaping and vitalising of the individuals
+    created by his fertile imagination.”
+
+ VANITAS. By Vernon Lee, Author of “Hauntings,” &c.
+
+ THE O’CONNORS OF BALLINAHINCH. By Mrs. Hungerford, Author of
+ “Molly Bawn,” &c.
+                                                   [_In the Press._
+
+ A BATTLE AND A BOY. By Blanche Willis Howard, Author of “Guenn,” &c.
+                                                 [_In preparation._
+
+
+
+
+                  Heinemann’s International Library.
+                        Edited by EDMUND GOSSE.
+
+   _New Review._--“If you have any pernicious remnants of literary
+    chauvinism I hope it will not survive the series of foreign classics
+    of which Mr. William Heinemann, aided by Mr. Edmund Gosse, is
+    publishing translations to the great contentment of all lovers of
+    literature.”
+
+   _Times._--“A venture which deserves encouragement.”
+
+   _Each Volume has an Introduction specially written by the Editor._
+     Price, in paper covers, 2_s._ 6_d._ each, or cloth, 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+ IN GOD’S WAY. From the Norwegian of Björnstjerne Björnson.
+
+   _Athenæum._--“Without doubt the most important and the most
+    interesting work published during the twelve months.”
+
+ PIERRE AND JEAN. From the French of Guy de Maupassant.
+
+   _Pall Mall Gazette._--“So fine and faultless, so perfectly
+    balanced, so steadily progressive, so clear and simple and
+    satisfying. It is admirable from beginning to end.”
+
+   _Athenæum._--“Ranks amongst the best gems of modern French
+    fiction”
+
+ THE CHIEF JUSTICE. From the German of Karl Emil
+    Franzos, Author of “For the Right,” &c.
+
+   _New Review._--“Few novels of recent times have a more
+    sustained and vivid human interest.”
+
+ WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. From the Russian of Count Lyof
+    Tolstoy.
+
+   _Manchester Guardian._--“Readable and well translated; full of
+    high and noble feeling.”
+
+ FANTASY. From the Italian of Matilde Serao.
+
+   _Scottish Leader._--“The book is full of a glowing and living
+    realism.... There is nothing like ‘Fantasy’ in modern literature.”
+
+ FROTH. From the Spanish of Don Armando Palacio-Valdés.
+
+   _Daily Telegraph._--“Vigorous and powerful in the highest degree.
+    It abounds in forcible delineation of character, and describes
+    scenes with rare and graphic strength.”
+
+ FOOTSTEPS OF FATE. From the Dutch of Louis Couperus.
+
+   _Gentlewoman._--“The consummate art of the writer prevents this
+    tragedy from sinking to melodrama. Not a single situation is
+    forced or a circumstance exaggerated.”
+
+ PEPITA JIMÉNEZ. From the Spanish of Juan Valera.
+
+   _New Review_ (Mr. George Saintsbury):--“There is no doubt at all
+    that it is one of the best stories that have appeared in any
+    country in Europe for the last twenty years.”
+
+ THE COMMODORE’S DAUGHTERS. From the Norwegian of Jonas Lie.
+
+   _Athenæum._--“Everything that Jonas Lie writes is attractive and
+    pleasant; the plot of deeply human interest, and the art noble.”
+
+ THE HERITAGE OF THE KURTS. From the Norwegian of Björnstjerne Björnson.
+
+   _National Observer._--“It is a book to read and a book to think
+    about, for, incontestably, it is the work of a man of genius.”
+
+
+_In the Press._
+
+ LOU. From the German of Baron F. v. Roberts.
+
+ DONA LUZ. From the Spanish of Juan Valera.
+
+ WITHOUT DOGMA. From the Polish of H. Sienkiewicz.
+
+
+
+
+                        Popular 3s. 6d. Novels.
+
+
+ CAPT’N DAVY’S HONEYMOON, The Blind Mother, and The Last
+    Confession. By Hall Caine, Author of “The Bondman,” “The
+    Scapegoat,” &c.
+
+ THE SCAPEGOAT. By Hall Caine, Author of “The Bondman,” &c.
+
+   _Mr. Gladstone writes_:--“I congratulate you upon ‘The Scapegoat’
+    as a work of art, and especially upon the noble and skilfully
+    drawn character of Israel.”
+
+   _Times._--“In our judgment it excels in dramatic force all his
+    previous efforts. For grace and touching pathos Naomi is a
+    character which any romancist in the world might be proud to
+    have created.”
+
+ THE BONDMAN. A New Saga. By Hall Caine. Twentieth Thousand.
+
+   _Mr. Gladstone._--“‘The Bondman’ is a work of which I recognise
+    the freshness, vigour, and sustained interest no less than its
+    integrity of aim.”
+
+   _Standard._--“Its argument is grand, and it is sustained with a
+    power that is almost marvellous.”
+
+ DESPERATE REMEDIES. By Thomas Hardy, Author of “Tess of
+    the D’Urbervilles,” &c.
+
+   _Saturday Review._--“A remarkable story worked out with
+    abundant skill.”
+
+ A MARKED MAN: Some Episodes in his Life. By Ada
+    Cambridge, Author of “Two Years’ Time,” “A Mere Chance,” &c.
+
+   _Morning Post._--“A depth of feeling, a knowledge of the human
+    heart, and an amount of tact that one rarely finds. Should take
+    a prominent place among the novels of the season.”
+
+ THE THREE MISS KINGS. By Ada Cambridge, Author of “A
+    Marked Man.”
+
+   _Athenæum._--“A charming study of character. The love stories
+    are excellent, and the author is happy in tender situations.”
+
+ NOT ALL IN VAIN. By Ada Cambridge, Author of “A Marked
+    Man,” “The Three Miss Kings,” &c.
+
+   _Guardian._--“A clever and absorbing story.”
+
+   _Queen._--“All that remains to be said is ‘read the book.’”
+
+ UNCLE PIPER OF PIPER’S HILL. By Tasma. New Popular
+    Edition.
+
+   _Guardian._--“Every page of it contains good wholesome food, which
+    demands and repays digestion. The tale itself is thoroughly
+    charming, and all the characters are delightfully drawn. We
+    strongly recommend all lovers of wholesome novels to make
+    acquaintance with it themselves, and are much mistaken if they
+    do not heartily thank us for the introduction.”
+
+ IN THE VALLEY. By Harold Frederic, Author of “The Lawton Girl,”
+    “Seth’s Brother’s Wife,” &c. With Illustrations.
+
+   _Times._--“The literary value of the book is high; the author’s
+    studies of bygone life presenting a life-like picture.”
+
+ PRETTY MISS SMITH. By Florence Warden, Author of “The
+    House on the Marsh,” “A Witch of the Hills,” &c.
+
+   _Punch._--“Since Miss Florence Warden’s ‘House on the Marsh,’ I
+    have not read a more exciting tale.”
+
+ NOR WIFE, NOR MAID. By Mrs. Hungerford, Author of
+    “Molly Bawn,” &c.
+
+   _Queen._--“It has all the characteristics of the writer’s work,
+    and greater emotional depth than most of its predecessors.”
+
+   _Scotsman._--“Delightful reading, supremely interesting.”
+
+ MAMMON. A Novel. By Mrs. Alexander, Author of “The
+    Wooing O’t,” &c.
+
+   _Scotsman._--“The present work is not behind any of its predecessors.
+    ‘Mammon’ is a healthy story, and as it has been thoughtfully written
+    it has the merit of creating thought in its readers.”
+
+ DAUGHTERS OF MEN. By Hannah Lynch, Author of “The
+    Prince of the Glades,” &c.
+
+   _Daily Telegraph._--“Singularly clever and fascinating.”
+
+   _Academy._--“One of the cleverest, if not also the pleasantest,
+    stories that have appeared for a long time.”
+
+ A ROMANCE OF THE CAPE FRONTIER. By Bertram Mitford,
+    Author of “Through the Zulu Country,” &c.
+
+   _Observer._--“This is a rattling tale, genial, healthy, and
+    spirited.”
+
+ ’TWEEN SNOW AND FIRE. A Tale of the Kafir War of 1877. By
+    Bertram Mitford.
+
+ THE MASTER OF THE MAGICIANS. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
+    and Herbert D. Ward.
+
+   _Athenæum._--“A thrilling story.”
+
+ THE AVERAGE WOMAN. By Wolcott Balestier. With an
+    Introduction by Henry James.
+
+ THE ATTACK ON THE MILL and Other Sketches of War. By Emile
+    Zola. With an essay on the short stories of M. Zola by Edmund
+    Gosse.
+
+ DUST. By Björnstjerne Björnson. Translated from the Norwegian.
+                                                   [_In the Press._
+
+ MADEMOISELLE MISS and Other Stories. By Henry Harland,
+    Author of “Mea Culpa,” &c.
+                                                   [_In the Press._
+
+ LOS CERRITOS. A Romance of the Modern Time. By Gertrude
+    Franklin Atherton, Author of “Hermia Suydam,” and “What Dreams
+    may Come.”
+
+   _Athenæum._--“Full of fresh fancies and suggestions. Told with
+    strength and delicacy. A decidedly charming romance.”
+
+ A MODERN MARRIAGE. By the Marquise Clara Lanza.
+
+   _Queen._--“A powerful story, dramatically and consistently
+    carried out.”
+
+   _Black and White._--“A decidedly clever book.”
+
+
+
+
+                        Popular Shilling Books.
+
+ MADAME VALERIE. By F. C. Philips, Author of “As in a
+    Looking-Glass,” &c.
+
+ THE MOMENT AFTER: A Tale of the Unseen. By Robert
+    Buchanan.
+
+   _Athenæum._--“Should be read--in daylight.”
+
+   _Observer._--“A clever _tour de force_.”
+
+   _Guardian._--“Particularly impressive, graphic, and powerful.”
+
+ CLUES; or, Leaves from a Chief Constable’s Note-Book. By
+    William Henderson, Chief Constable of Edinburgh.
+
+   _Mr. Gladstone._--“I found the book full of interest.”
+
+ A VERY STRANGE FAMILY. By F. W. Robinson, Author of “Grandmother’s
+    Money,” “Lazarus in London,” &c.
+
+   _Glasgow Herald._--“An ingeniously devised plot, of which the
+    interest is kept up to the very last page. A judicious blending of
+    humour and pathos further helps to make the book delightful reading
+    from start to finish.”
+
+
+
+
+                         Dramatic Literature.
+
+                    THE PLAYS OF ARTHUR W. PINERO.
+
+      With Introductory Notes by Malcolm C. Salaman. 16mo, Paper
+           Covers, 1_s._ 6_d._; or Cloth, 2_s._ 6_d._ each.
+
+ THE TIMES: A Comedy in Four Acts. With a Preface by the Author.
+    (Vol. I.)
+
+   _Daily Telegraph._--“‘The Times’ is the best example yet given
+    of Mr. Pinero’s power as a satirist. So clever is his work that it
+    beats down opposition. So fascinating is his style that we cannot
+    help listening to him.”
+
+   _Morning Post._--“Mr. Pinero’s latest belongs to a high order of
+    dramatic literature, and the piece will be witnessed again with
+    all the greater zest after the perusal of such admirable dialogue.”
+
+ THE PROFLIGATE: A Play in Four Acts. With Portrait of the
+    Author, after J. Mordecai. (Vol. II.)
+
+   _Pall Mall Gazette._--“Will be welcomed by all who have the
+    true interests of the stage at heart.”
+
+ THE CABINET MINISTER: A Farce in Four Acts. (Vol. III.)
+
+   _Observer._--“It is as amusing to read as it was when played.”
+
+ THE HOBBY HORSE: A Comedy in Three Acts. (Vol. IV.)
+
+   _St. James’s Gazette._--“Mr. Pinero has seldom produced better
+    or more interesting work than in ‘The Hobby Horse.’”
+
+ LADY BOUNTIFUL: A Play in Four Acts. (Vol. V.)
+
+ THE MAGISTRATE: A Farce in Three Acts. (Vol. VI.)
+
+ DANDY DICK: A Farce in Three Acts. (Vol. VII.)
+
+      To be followed by The Schoolmistress, The Weaker Sex, Lords and
+                  Commons, The Squire, and Sweet Lavender.
+
+ A NEW PLAY. By Henrik Ibsen. Translated from the Norwegian. Small 4to.
+                                                 [_In preparation._
+
+ A NEW PLAY. By Björnstjerne Björnson. Translated from the Norwegian.
+                                                 [_In preparation._
+
+ THE PRINCESSE MALEINE: A Drama in Five Acts (Translated by
+    Gerard Harry), and THE INTRUDER: A Drama in One Act. By Maurice
+    Maeterlinck. With an Introduction by Hall Caine, and
+    a Portrait of the Author. Small 4to, cloth, 5_s._
+
+   _Athenæum._--“In the creation of the ‘atmosphere’ of the play
+    M. Maeterlinck shows his skill. It is here that he communicates
+    to us the _nouveau frisson_, here that he does what no one else
+    has done. In ‘The Intruder’ the art consists of the subtle
+    gradations of terror, the slow, creeping progress of the
+    nightmare of apprehension. Nothing quite like it has been done
+    before--not even by Poe--not even by Villiers.”
+
+ THE FRUITS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: A Comedy in Four Acts. By Count
+    Lyof Tolstoy. Translated from the Russian by E. J.
+    Dillon. With Introduction by A. W. Pinero. Small 4to,
+    with Portrait, 5_s._
+
+   _Pall Mall Gazette._--“The whole effect of the play is distinctly
+    Molièresque; it has something of the large humanity of the master.
+    Its satire is genial, almost gay.”
+
+ HEDDA GABLER: A Drama in Four Acts. By Henrik Ibsen.
+    Translated from the Norwegian by Edmund Gosse. Small
+    4to, cloth, with Portrait, 5_s._ Vaudeville Edition, paper,
+    1_s._ Also a Limited Large Paper Edition, 21_s._ _net_.
+
+   _Times._--“The language in which this play is couched is a model
+    of brevity, decision, and pointedness.... Every line tells, and
+    there is not an incident that does not bear on the action immediate
+    or remote. As a corrective to the vapid and foolish writing with
+    which the stage is deluged ‘Hedda Gabler’ is perhaps entitled to
+    the place of honour.”
+
+ THE DRAMA, ADDRESSES. By Henry Irving. Fcap. 8vo. With
+    Portrait by J. McN. Whistler.
+                                                   [_In the Press._
+
+ STRAY MEMORIES. By Ellen Terry. In one volume.
+    Illustrated.
+                                                 [_In preparation._
+
+ SOME INTERESTING FALLACIES OF THE Modern Stage. An Address
+    delivered to the Playgoers’ Club at St. James’s Hall, on Sunday,
+    6th December, 1891. By Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Crown 8vo,
+    sewed, 6_d._
+
+ THE LIFE OF HENRIK IBSEN. By Henrik Jæger. Translated
+    by Clara Bell. With the Verse done into English from the
+    Norwegian Original by Edmund Gosse. Crown 8vo, cloth,
+    6_s._
+
+   _St. James’s Gazette._--“Admirably translated. Deserves a
+    cordial and emphatic welcome.”
+
+   _Guardian._--“Ibsen’s dramas at present enjoy a considerable vogue,
+    and their admirers will rejoice to find full descriptions and
+    criticisms in Mr. Jæger’s book.”
+
+
+
+
+                                Poetry.
+
+ LOVE SONGS OF ENGLISH POETS, 1500-1800. With Notes by Ralph
+    H. Caine. Fcap. 8vo, rough edges, 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+    *** _Large Paper Edition, limited to 100 Copies, 10s. 6d. Net._
+
+ IVY AND PASSION FLOWER: Poems. By Gerard Bendall,
+    Author of “Estelle,” &c. &c. 12mo, cloth, 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+   _Scotsman._--“Will be read with pleasure.”
+
+   _Musical World._--“The poems are delicate specimens of art,
+    graceful and polished.”
+
+
+ VERSES. By Gertrude Hall. 12mo, cloth, 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+   _Manchester Guardian._--“Will be welcome to every lover of
+    poetry who takes it up.”
+
+ MAGONIA: A Poem. By Charles Godfrey Leland (Hans Breitmann). Fcap. 8vo.
+                                                   [_In the Press._
+
+ IDYLLS OF WOMANHOOD. By C. Amy Dawson. Fcap. 8vo, gilt top, 5_s._
+
+
+
+
+                   Heinemann’s Scientific Handbooks.
+
+ MANUAL OF BACTERIOLOGY. By A. B. Griffiths, Ph.D., F.R.S. (Edin.),
+    F.C.S. Crown 8vo, cloth, Illustrated. 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+ MANUAL OF ASSAYING GOLD, SILVER, COPPER, and Lead Ores.
+    By Walter Lee Brown, B.Sc. Revised, Corrected, and
+    considerably Enlarged, with a chapter on the Assaying of Fuel, &c.
+    By A. B. Griffiths, Ph.D., F.R.S. (Edin.), F.C.S. Crown
+    8vo, cloth, Illustrated, 7_s._ 6_d._
+
+   _Colliery Guardian._--“A delightful and fascinating book.”
+
+   _Financial World._--“The most complete and practical manual
+    on everything which concerns assaying of all which have come
+    before us.”
+
+ GEODESY. By J. Howard Gore. Crown 8vo, cloth,
+    Illustrated, 5_s._
+
+   _St. James’s Gazette._--“The book may be safely recommended to
+    those who desire to acquire an accurate knowledge of Geodesy.”
+
+   _Science Gossip._--“It is the best we could recommend to all geodetic
+    students. It is full and clear, thoroughly accurate, and up to date
+    in all matters of earth-measurements.”
+
+ THE PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF GASES. By Arthur L. Kimball, of the Johns
+    Hopkins University. Crown 8vo, cloth, Illustrated, 5_s._
+
+   _Chemical News._--“The man of culture who wishes for a general
+    and accurate acquaintance with the physical properties of gases,
+    will find in Mr. Kimball’s work just what he requires.”
+
+ HEAT AS A FORM OF ENERGY. By Professor R. H. Thurston, of Cornell
+    University. Crown 8vo, cloth, Illustrated, 5_s._
+
+   _Manchester Examiner._--“Bears out the character of its predecessors
+    for careful and correct statement and deduction under the light of
+    the most recent discoveries.”
+
+                                   LONDON:
+                              WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+                           21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+
+
+The *** character was originally printed as an inverted asterism.
+
+Page numbers in the Index of Authors have been changed from Arabic
+to Roman because they duplicated page numbers in the work itself.
+
+In plain-text version, showed italics as _, and ignored boldface
+and small caps markings.
+
+Changes made to text:
+
+ On page 66, changed “improve ” to “improve.”
+ On page 75, changed “sold” to “sold.”
+ On page 148, changed “you.” to “you.’”
+ On page x, changed “origina talent” to “original talent”
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76769 ***