to you heart and soul, as I am," he said,
reproachfully. But he took her hand again,
and kissed it.

"Perhaps," said Veronica, "it will be
best that I should meet you here again,
tomorrow. The place is a public promenade.
There can be no reason why I should not
enjoy the sunshine here of a morning. I
will come."

"May I not walk with you now, until
you are within sight of the Palazzo?"

"No I will go home alone. It is best
so. Addio."

"Addio! I shall see you this evening.
But it will be like looking at the sky from
behind prison bars. Tomorrow! Until
tomorrow!"

As Veronica neared the porte cochère
of the house she lived in, she became aware of
a step close at her heels. She turned her
head at the sound, and saw Paul.

"Good morning, miladi," said Paul, with
his habitual grave and respectful salutation.

"Where have you been at this hour?"
asked Veronica, startled out of her self-
command.

"Sir John sent me to the Via Toledo,
miladi. There is no more eau-de-cologne in
his dressing-case, and Sir John desired to
have some got at once."

The Via Toledo was far enough from the
scene of Veronica's interview with Barletti.

"The sun was so delightfully bright,
that it tempted me out early. I have been
walking by the sea," said Veronica.

She could not for her life have resisted
the temptation to make this sort of excuse
for, or explanation of, her having been out
at that unusual hour. And yet she hated
herself the instant the words were said:
and swept past Paul with intensified hauteur
in her always haughty gait.

"I could not think what had become of
ma —pardon, I mean of miladi," said
the French maid, when Veronica re-entered
her chamber. "And miladi dressed
herself! Mon Dieu!"

The Abigail cast up hands and eyes at
the tremendous thought.

"I had a caprice to go out by myself. I
went to walk in the sunshine. This January
sun is like June in England. It warms
the blood in one's veins."

"O it is very true, miladi. But it burns
one's skin. See how basané all these
Neapolitans are! But Monsieur Paul also
had a fancy to go out this morning."

"I saw Paul. His master sent him out,
to the Via Toledo."

"Ah, Sir John sent him? That is
different. But he must have made a long
détour, for I saw him from my bed-room
window, coming from the Villa Reale."

SCOTCH BALLADS.

THE Bannatyne Club first dined together,
with Sir Walter Scott in the chair, on the
twenty-seventh of February, in the year
eighteen 'twenty-three. Fifteen members
were present, among whom was Mr. James
Maidment, sixth on the original list. From
the preface to a book of Scottish Ballads
and Songs, published by him ten years
ago, we learn that in early youth Mr.
Maidment had begun to collect songs,
popular histories, and the like; and in the
preface to a volume of the same kind
published last year —the last new book of its
sort —he recals with natural satisfaction
Scott's nomination of him to the Bannatyne
Club, and the years of friendly intercourse
during which the man of genius suggested
occupations for the industry of the
painstaking literary antiquary. Trained at the
Scotch bar, Mr. Maidment has a particular
relish for details of family pedigree; his
taste for antiquarian research, perhaps,
brought him practice in which questions
of inheritance were involved. But his
services to the public in the way of a life-
long study of popiilar literature entitle the
venerable survivor from among Scott's first
comrades of the Bannatyne Club to the
friendly acquaintance of the larger public
of our day. He has by this time edited
some fifty or sixty pieces of old literature,
and has almost outlived the fashion to
which he was born, and to which he held
for many years, of thinking the better of
his publications because only a very few
copies of each —sometimes not more than
twenty-five —were printed. Mr. Maidment
has given us lately, through an ordinary
publisher, the before-mentioned couple of
volumes upon Scottish ballads and songs,
with an introduction to each, that
contains the ripest fruit of his experience.
It is a capital book, but it is a
combative book, and fights a losing battle,
under the banner of Sir Patrick Spens.
Mr. Maidment is made rather unhappy by
the heresies of Mr. Robert Chambers, which
have gained ground since their promulgation,
and he finds it impossible to admit
that some five-and-twenty of the popular
Scotch ballads are not so old as they seem.
So he has revived the fight over the Lady
Wardlaw Heresies, from which Mr. Chambers