"That will do. You will have a cover
laid for the prince. I shall try to persuade
him to stay to amuse and cheer Sir John a
little this evening."

After all she had not succeeded in simply
issuing her commands without apology or
explanation to Paul.

The latter bowed and withdrew.

Veronica waited until his footsteps had
died away in the corridor; then she said,
putting her hand to her forehead with the
gesture of one struck with a sudden
remembrance: "Oh, I forgot to give Paul a
message for Sir John!"

"Shall I go, miladi?" asked Beppina.

"No, never mind. I will go myself.
Give me a lace scarf, or something to wrap
over my head. That will do. Lay out a
dinner dress—anything light and cool. I
shall return in a few minutes."

Veronica passed through her boudoir
and descended the staircase leading to
Sir John's apartments, which were on the
ground floor. Arrived at the basement
story, however, she entered one of the long
suite of reception-rooms which occupied
the whole west side of the villa; opened a
glass door; and stepped out into the loggia.
Cesare de' Barletti was smoking in the
loggia, as Paul had said. As soon as he
perceived Veronica, he threw away his cigar
and advanced towards her, hat in hand.

AS THE CROW FLIES.

DUE NORTH. SCARBOROUGH AND WHITBY.

THE crow, with a clear look-out over the
German Ocean, and with the Dogger Bank
and the coast of Jutland out there yonder,
although invisible even to his keen, black,
restless eyes, turns from the sea to look down
with placid approbation on pleasant, breezy,
briny, wave-washed Scarborough. It was
a small and humble cluster of the huts of
Yorkshire fishermen in the old times before
one of Stephen's barons, William le Gros,
Earl of Albemarle and Holderness, built the
grand castle, whose shattered tower still
challenges old Time from its stately cliff.
Yet it was not so humble but that it had its
stormy days in the Danish wars, and more
especially when that fierce rebel Tosti, the
son of the great Earl Goodwin, and a brother
of Harold (urged on by William of
Normandy, who had already a shrewd eye on
our white cliffs, and by Baldwin, Earl of
Flanders), landed in Yorkshire a second
time (after being once driven back to his
ships by the watchful Earls of Northumberland
and Chester), and, burning, robbing,
and slaying, came reeking with blood to
little Scarborough. The legend is that the
Norwegians, greedy for slaughter, piled
great masses of timber on the hill where
the ruins of the castle now stand, and,
having set the beams in one great crimson
drift of raging flame, stuck pitchforks into
the burning wood and hurled it down upon
the roofs and into the narrow streets of the
town, which was soon wrapped in fire. But
a little later Scarborough had its revenge,
for Harold and sixty thousand Saxons met
truculent Tosti and the Norwegians at
Stamford Bridge, and, after ten hours'
fighting Harold slew his rebellious brother
and the rash Norwegian king, and twenty
shattered ships sufficed to carry back the
remnants of the army that five hundred
ships had brought.

In Edward the Second's reign,
Scarborough had again its hour of romance.
The foolish, wild young king had been revelling
at York with his Gascon favourite,
Gaveston, who daily grew more insolent
and rapacious. The indignant barons, who
hated the insolent foreigner, headed by
Henry the Third's grandson, the Earl
of Lancaster, Lincoln, Leicester, Salisbury,
and Derby, besieged Gaveston in
Scarborough, where the king had placed
him for safety, making him governor of
that eagle's nest of a castle. Gaveston
repulsed bravely several attacks, but the
provisions in the town falling short, and his
communication with the king at York being
intercepted, he surrendered to the "Black
Dog," as the Earl of Lancaster was called
by his enemies, on conditions, if negotiations
failed, that he should be restored safe to
Scarborough. But from Deddington Castle,
near Banbury, he was hurried to Warwick,
and from there taken to Blacklow Hill (on
Gaversley Heath) and there beheaded. The
king, inconsolable at the death of his
favourite, had the body interred at a new
church at Langley, and with his own hands
spread two cloth-of-gold palls upon his
tomb. This execution of the young French
vaurien took place just two years before
the battle of Bannockburn.

Scarborough also had its adventures
during the Wyatt rebellion, when the
approaching Spanish marriage of Queen Mary
was fevering the brains of all aggressive
Protestants. Mr. Thomas Stafford, second
son of Lord Stafford, and a hot-headed
adherent of Wyatt, collected some
English fugitives in France and returned with
them to Scarborough. On a market-day
he, and thirty of his men dressed as carters