all the diavolerie acted in the world. Besides, it is no sin to love in Italy-not her laws, or religion, or customs teach it so. And when the next evening, as she sat weeping beneath the myrtle trees where he had last stood, milor pushed the branches aside, and limping beside her folded her with his one arm-the other was in a sling-in an embrace; ah, words fail me, signor, to go on. In a delirium of joy, she had no strength to resist; and milor, carrying her as well as he was able, and assisted by Giacomo, who was always stationed to keep watch, and if any one approached to make excuse to lead them away in another direction, placed her in his calèche, and brought her to the Lung Arno.

"Ah, the stars glimmered cold and the wind sighed as I opened the doors, and in obedience to my promise to milor, assisted to bring her in. Then all late as it was, I was sent to find a priest, and as ill-luck would have it, on the Ponte del Mezzo I met Father Guiseppe, the same who had absolved me from my vow; and returning with him to the palazzo I was witness to the ceremony. Before it was hardly over milor got much frightened, and told me to arrange to set off instantly to Leghorn. From there we took a boat to Genoa, and hasted on road for Milan, intending to go quick to Paris and afterwards to England.

"But at the Croce di Malta, where it was thought better to go than to the Albergo Reale, or Hotel de Ville, the knell was tolled that was to put to flight all our happiness. Milor was talking about the passports, and miladi, who was sipping un boccone of chocolate, laughed merrily: ahi, but it was the last time: and said 'Go away, Agatha, back to your convent, wicked novice that you were to leave it.' And making as if to blow a candle out, she said— 'There, go quick, and joy go with you. Now, carissimo mio, call me Egla. Is it not as pretty?'

"Truly the joy had not stayed to be sent twice. Milor could say no word at all, but only stand and regard her fixedly. And he was in a stupore, as her features made themselves remembered to him.

"But such a thing could not be, he said to himself, and sat down, and asked her how she came to have a name like that, and to tell him about her home and her people. And he raised a book that lay on the table, and opened it, to hide la miseria on his face.

"Ohime; the words she spoke made his heart grieve.

"Her father, she said, had been seized suddenly ill, and had died in three days, leaving her all alone in Italy, with only her maid that had come with her from England. The priests always stayed

with her father, and would not let her see him.

And after he was

dead, they told her he had turned true Catholic, and desired her to go into a convent, or if she did not like that, to go to the convent of the Sacré Coeur for a year to finish her education.

"The same evening La Madre Superiore came herself in a carriage to fetch her, and when she refused to go without her maid, she let the maid go too. La signora had just written a letter to her aunt in England to come and fetch her at once, and seeing it, la madre put it in her pocket to post.

"She had not been long at the convent when she was sent for one morning into the parlour, and la madre told her her maid Margarita had been taken ill of the fever in the night, and was gone to the hospital on Monte Lupo. And when la signora desired to go and see her, they said she would take the fever, and would not let her.

"Then she wrote again to England, and to her brother at Athens, and to the English Consul, but although il vicario himself said he would see the letters sent right, the poor child-she had only fifteen years-never got one word of answer nor any one to come for her. And only that they tormented her to turn true Cattolica and be a nun, she would not care so much. Her brother, she knew, would see after her when he came away from the wars. "And then he would find Margarita, and they would all go home to England, and never want to leave it again.

"Milor looked like a spectre when he went from the room. I said to myself, What ails him to be ill?

"That night he went right out into the marshes beyond la Porta Romana, and returned not back till late next day.

"And all the time the poor signora wept much not to know what it was about. She had great fear his thought was that it was only to get out of the convent that she had married him. And an infant could see how she loved him.

"At last he came in so changed, more than in all the years he had been in Greece, and he only stayed a few instants with miladi, but went away and had a little dark room looking into the courtyard. He would, he said, tell miladi what made him to be out next day.

"But it was not next day, nor for many next days, not till the poor signorina had worn herself pale with grief at his strange way, that at last he was obliged to say something. Poor milor, he wanted to save her mind knowing it, and thought better than that it would be to go to a convent. Ah, if only she had been Cattolica

and let me fetch a priest to confess her!—Ah, your pipe is not alight, signor!"

"Hang the pipe. Go on, will you?"

"Well, milor told her they had been married in a mistake and it was no marriage; because he was not Lord Byron as she had believed; and how to do he did not know unless she went again to a convent.

"If milor had had his right mind he would know that would kill her, and when she was so in anger with him his love for her made him quite ungovernable, and in agony he said

"Egla, my adored Egla. Oh! spare me not. Heap curses on my head-on the head of your wretched brother Norman. Yet who could have foreseen this? Oh! accursed be their machinations who have brought about this misery.'

"Deh, that was a time of desolazione. Miladi lay like dead, and milor was no better than a lunatico.

"Dr. Cappelli nearly lived at the hotel, and fra poco said it would be better to go to the Lake Como. Cosi I made demand about it, and found a villa in a quiet part near to Blevio. Not ever seeing it, milor told me to arrange for it if it would make convenient for plenty of apartamenti.

went, and how But when the

"And as soon as it was ready, with domestics we the winter was passed matters not to the story. chestnut trees built up their towers to heaven, miladi got more ill, and I went to Milan for Dr. Cappelli, and as soon as he came he asked for miladi's husband; and when he was told, as the domestics all thought was true, that he was on his travels, he asked for milor. Ohime, it seemed we had not known unhappiness till that time.

"At night and at day milor wandered on the mountains and in the pine forests, or would throw himself in a boat on the lake and not mind what it did or where it would take him.

“Often I said to myself: 'We shall never see milor again as living man,' and only that miladi should not be alone he would, without doubt, have rid himself of life.

"And then the time arrived I got orders to warn the servants and prepare for England, and it is a marvel how miladi lived that night of arriving there. That steward had begun to make of it a day of rejoicing.

"Well, September had come when milor went for a doctor and nurse that he knew. And all things were kept retired in the west wing; and not a soul in the house but me knew that when my lady's maid, as she was called, went back home two little boy

babies went with her. And that, signor, was the very year you say you were born, and the good nurse's name was Jessy, or if you will, Jessica, Glenelg."

"A coincidence, my friend-nothing more. very saddest, as you say, I ever heard; and you Do they still live ?"

faithfully out of it too.

But a sad tale-the

seem to have come

Poor milor, he was

"How? milor, and me here in India! killed that night returning to take Jessy home.

A great storm

frightened the horses, so little they went out, and never at night. And miladi, when she was told, fainted away, and never spoke another word in her right mind, and not long after died."

"There is a great commotion, like anchoring. Allahabad, I suppose," said Alyn. "Buona notte, Pagliardini-is not that it? Don't dream your tale over again. But none of this ill-fated parentage for me. I cannot argue with you now. But Granny is my own Granny, every inch of her, and in my veins runs honest peasant blood. Once more, good night."

And Alyn was in a manner right without knowing it, at least in his energetic protest; and Felice's fevered story, albeit he knew it not, was happily as baseless as the airy fabric of a dream.

CHAPTER IX.

In a hollow land,

From which old fires have broken, men may fear

Fresh fire and ruin.

TENNYSON.

AT Calcutta, as he passed through, Alyn made every inquiry as to the fate of Captain Bagot, the result being that in all human probability the gallant officer had fallen one of the earliest victims. o the Mutiny.

Felice's story kept up a seething torment in the chambers of Alyn's brain, and when, soon after midnight, he stepped on board the Heraclitus, bound for Southampton, it was with a feeling that all life was utter weariness.

On reaching Wales, Jessy's cottage, like the floating island on Derwentwater, was difficult to find, the good old lady having more than once of late been compelled to beat a retreat before the persevering enemy of her peace, her profligate son. But at length Felice, on knocking at a door to make further inquiry, at the first glance recognised the object of their search; thus materially confirming the valet's romantic story.

But with none the less warmth of affection did Alyn greet his good VOL. XIV., N.S. 1875.

3 C

old Granny, who felt herself scandalised at being embraced by this big bearded foreigner, and could with difficulty be brought to credit his assertion that he was her own boy Alyn, come back all the way from the Indies.

Presently Granny was observed to scan with curious eagerness the stranger's olive-tinted features. Fitful gleams of the far-past battle illumined the brain of the old war-horse, and it soon became clear to her when and where those soft low tones had been her law. Still stronger confirmation was this to Alyn of Felice's weird-like. but most fallacious history, and our hero, excited beyond endurance. demanded if the story were true.

The day had clearly gone by for Jessy to evade his impetuous questioning by setting the chimney on fire, giving the view-halloo to a passing sail, or appealing to his affection for herself, so there was nothing for it but to give a reluctant assent to certain facts known to her, and to refer him to Felice for the rest.

Alyn hugged the unhappy delusion to his breast, displacing therefrom all pleasanter occupants, and unable to endure the haunting presence within the cottage, he carried it out into the cool night air, and confronted it beneath the stars.

Presently it seemed as if in its bitterest anguish descended upon him the spirit of his father as on that weird night when roaming bareheaded among the Apennines he had called upon the rocks to cover him. Now, up and down the mountains, over chasm and cataract, he sought to escape from the terrible feeling which, persistently clinging to him, mingled with the deathless imagination born on the brink of the Cawnpore well, till he was driven to the verge of madness.

Near upon noon next day he found himself gazing vacantly at the entrance of his old-loved haunt, Yr Ogo. But giant throes had, since those early days, convulsed old Pen and filled up its interstices with shattered debris.

Towards evening the tyrant hunger began to assert its claims and cravings, so, groping for blackberries beneath the dim light of a crescent moon, he endeavoured to appease the impatient despot, winding up eventually with turnips au naturel, and quenching his thirst at a rill of sparkling water.

After more wanderings, through stony pass and mossy glen, he followed up an impulse which had taken possession of him to see his brother Owen.

Setting his face towards Llandudno, where for many years past his brother had lived, he soon found himself, to his great dismay, in ill