having Louise in the room?" he said
reproachfully after the baronet and Mr. Davis
were gone.

"Certainly, I could!"

"I suppose if that old blockhead of a Sir
Gale were to come alone, you would receive
him in the same way?"

"Most likely. What then? Don't be
absurd, Cesare."

"Ebbene, I think it very unjust, unkind,
cruel, that I should be the only person
debarred from your society in the way I
am!"

"Debarred from my society? Dio mio!
It seems to me, Cesare, that you are here
all day long."

"Oh, I trouble you? I importune you?
You have no heart. You do not love me."

Then came a quarrel, not the first by
many, which ended, as all its predecessors
had ended, by Cesare's making humble
apologies and protestations of devotion.

"Ah, Veronica mia," he sighed, " I wish
sometimes that there had never been any
question of this money! You would have
married me and we should have been
together all this time. We would have gone
down to the country house beyond Salerno.
How happy it would have been! I hate
this England of yours! I have scarcely had
a happy moment since I came here."

"Cesare, that sounds all very fine, but
how much does it mean? If you and I had
married and stayed in Italy, we should
have been dining off dry bread and melon-
rinds by this time. And how charming for
me to be going about in a coarse petticoat
and jacket, with a copper pin stuck in my
hair, and no shoes or stockings! Neapolitan
peasants are very picturesque at the Opera:
but I fancy the real life of the real people
would not quite suit you. It would not suit
me at all events."

"My wife would not have had to live as
you say," remonstrated Cesare.

"Oh andiamo, cugino mio! I know
pretty well what sort of style ' your wife'
would have had to live in. And the fact is
we should have been much worse off than
the peasants, because we should have had to
appear something different from what we
were. Shabby gentility—— Ouf! it makes
me shudder! And as to your not liking
England, you know nothing of it yet. If
we were rich, Cesare, you would see how
the world would be cap in hand to us!"

"I don't think I want the world to be
cap in hand to me. I only want you to
love me," answered Cesare, pathetically.

Then Veronica gave him her hand and
sent him away, alleging that she was tired.
In truth she was tired in spirit. She was
getting very weary of Cesare's complaints
and importunities. She had felt herself to
be in the position of guiding spirit since
their arrival in London. In Naples, where
she had, whilst domineering over him,
depended on him for support in many
things, she had liked him better. For her
own nature was too entirely undisciplined
not to be irked by the task of leading
another. She hated the trouble of thinking,
arranging, and deciding. And there
were in her some glimmerings of nobler
things, which made her scorn herself at
times, and consequently scorn Cesare for his
submissive idolatry of her.

As she had once told Maud, she saw the
better and chose the worse. If Cesare would
but assume a more manly tone — if he
would even be rough and self-asserting
—she fancied she should be less
discontented. He complained and grumbled
indeed, but it was in the tone of a child
who vents its temper, well knowing all the
while that it must finally submit. Once,
in a moment of irritation, she dropped some
word of the kind to Cesare. And his
amazed and sorrowful reception of the word
nearly drove her wild.

"I don't understand you, Veronica," he
had said, reproachfully. " It seems to me
that you are very ungrateful. No woman
was ever loved more truly than I love you.
Do you wish for unkindness and tyranny?
Who can comprehend a woman?"

Poor Veronica did not comprehend
herself. She could not tell him that his
complaisance for her whims, his devotion to
her wishes, alienated her from him. She
could not tell him that his humouring of
her haughty temper degraded her in her
own esteem. And yet she wished to love
Cesare. She was fully minded to be-
come Principessa de' Barletti, and the
prospect of that union without affection
afforded a glimpse of something so terrible
that she shut her mind's eyes before it,
shuddering.

But she would be true to Cesare. And
she would love him. Poor Cesare; he was
kind and gentle, and she was really fond of
him. And by-and-bye — so she told herself
—she would be able to influence and change
him in many things. But meanwhile that
which she yearned for, and thought of at
every solitary moment of her waking time,
was to see Maud.

She had been much moved when at
Naples Mr. Frost had made known to her