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My aunt Groves said I had a remarkable talent for languages."

I groaned inwardly at this, for the same aunt Groves had vouched for a sum of seventeen hundred and odd pounds as her niece's fortune, but which was so beautifully "tied up," as they called it, that neither Chancellor nor Master were ever equal to the task of untying it.

"Of course, dearest, let us learn Italian ;" and I thought how I'd crush a junior counsel some day with a smashing bit of Dante.

We started that same night-travelled on day after day-crossed Mont Cenis in a snow-storm, and reached the Trombetta as wayworn and wretched-looking a pair as ever travelled on an errand of bliss and beatitude.

"In for a penny" is very Irish philosophy; but I can't help that, so I wrote to my brother Peter to sell out another hundred for me out of the "Threes," saying "dear Paulina's health required a little change to a milder climate" (it was snowing when I wrote, and the thermometer over the chimneypiece at 9° Reaumur, with windows that wouldn't shut, and a marble floor without carpet)" that the balmy air of Italy" (my teeth chattered as I set it down) "would soon restore her; and indeed already she seemed to feel the change." That she did, for she was crouching over a pan of charcoal ashes, with a railroadwrapper over her shoulders.

It's no use going over what is in every one's experience on first coming south of the Alps-the daily, hourly difficulty of not believing that you have taken a wrong road and got into Siberia; and strangest of all it is to see how little the natives think of it. I declare I often thought soap must be a great refrigerant, and I wish some chemist would inquire into the matter. "Are we ever to begin this blessed language?" said Mrs O'D. to me, after four days of close arrest-snow still falling and the thermometer going daily down,

VOL. XCV.-NO. DLXXX.

down, lower and lower. Now I had made inquiries the day before from the landlord, and learned that he knew of a most competent person, not exactly a regular teacher who would insist upon our going to work in school fashion, but a man of sense and a gentleman-indeed, a person of rank and title, with whom the world had gone somewhat badly, and who was at that very moment suffering for his political opinions, far in advance, as they were, of those of his age.

"He's a friend of Gioberti," whispered the landlord in my ear, while his features became animated with the most intense significance. Now, I had never so much as heard of Gioberti, but I felt it would be a deep disgrace to confess it, and so I only exclaimed, with an air of half-incredulity, "Indeed!"

"As true as I'm here," replied he. "He usually drops in about noon to read the Opinione,' and, if you permit, I'll send him up to you. His name is Count Annibale Castrocaro."

I hastened forthwith to Mrs O'D., to apprise her of the honour that awaited us; repeating, a little in extenso, all that the host had said, and finishing with the stunning announcement, "and a friend of Gioberti." Mrs O'Dowd never flinched under the shock, and, too proud to own her ignorance, she pertly remarked, "I don't think the more of him for that."

I felt that she had beat me, and I sat down abashed and humiliated. Meanwhile Mrs O'D. retired to make some change of dress; but, reappearing after a while in her smartest morning toilette, and a very coquettish little cap, with cherrycoloured ribbons, I saw what the word Count had done at once.

Just as the clock struck twelve, the waiter flung wide the double doors of our room, and announced, as pompously as though for royalty, "Il Signor Conte di Castrocaro," and there entered a tall man slightly stooping in the shoulders, with a profusion of the very blackest hair on his neck and shoulders, his age any

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thing from thirty-five to forty-eight, and his dress a shabby blue surtout, buttoned to the throat and reaching below the knees. He bowed and slid, and bowed again, till he came opposite where my wife sat, and then, with rather a dramatic sort of grace, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. She reddened a little, but I saw she wasn't displeased with the air of homage that accompanied the ceremony, and she begged him to be seated.

I own I was disappointed with the Count, his hair was so greasy, and his hands so dirty, and his general get-up so uncared for; but Mrs O'D. talked away with him very pleasantly, and he replied in his own broken English, making little grimaces and smiles and gestures, and some very tender glances, do duty where his parts of speech failed him. In fact, I watched him as a sort of psychological phenomenon, and I arrived at the conclusion that this friend of Gioberti's was a very clever artist.

All was speedily settled for the lessons-hour, terms, and mode of instruction. It was to be entirely conversational, with a little themewriting, no getting by heart, no irregular verbs, no declensions, no genders. I did beg hard for a little grammar, but he wouldn't hear of it. It was against his "system," and so I gave in.

We began the next day, but the Count almost ignored me altogether, directing almost all his attentions to Mrs O'D.; and as I had already some small knowledge of the elementary part of the language, I was just as well pleased that she should come up, as it were, to my level. From this cause I often walked off before the lesson was over, and sometimes, indeed, I skulked it altogether, finding the system, as well as Gioberti's friend, to be an unconscionable bore. Mrs O'D., on the contrary, displayed an industry I never believed her to possess, and would pass whole evenings over her exercises, which often covered several sheets of letter-paper.

We had now been about five weeks in Turin, when my brother wrote to request I would come back as speedily as I could, that a case in which I held a brief was high in the cause-list, and would be tried very early in the session. I own I was not sorry at the recall. I detested the dreary life I was leading. I hated Turin and its bad feeding and bad theatres, its rough wines and its rougher inhabitants.

"Did you tell the Count we are off on Saturday?" asked I of Mrs O'D.

"Yes," said she, dryly.

"I suppose he's inconsolable," said I, with a sneer.

"He's very sorry we're going, if you mean that, Mr O'Dowd; and so am I too."

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"Yes, I'll see him with sincere pleasure for once," I cried; since it is to say good-bye to him."

I was in my dressing-room, packing up for the journey, when the Count was announced and shown in. "Excuse me, Count," said I, "for receiving you so informally, but I have a hasty summons to call me back to England, and no time to spare."

"I will, notwithstanding, ask you for some of that time, all-precious as it is," said he in French, and with a serious gravity that I had never observed in him before.

"Well, sir," said I, stiffly; "I am at your orders."

It is now seventeen long years since that interview, and I am free to own that I have not even yet attained to sufficient calm and temper to relate what took place. I can but give the substance of our conversation. It is not overpleasant to dwell on, but it was to this purport:-The Count had come to inform me that, without any intention or endeavour on his part,

he had gained Mrs O'Dowd's affections and won her heart! Yes, muchvalued reader, he made this declaration to me, sitting opposite to me at the fire, as coolly and unconcernedly as if he was apologising for having carried off my umbrella by mistake. It is true, he was most circumstantial in showing that all the ardour was on one side, and that he, throughout the whole adventure, conducted himself as became a Grand Galantuomo, and the friend of Gioberti, whatever that might mean.

My amazement-I might almost call it my stupefaction-at the unparalleled impudence of the man, so overcame me, that I listened to him without an effort at interruption.

"I have come to you, therefore, to-day," said he, "to give up her letters."

"Her letters!" exclaimed I; "and she has written to you!"

"Twenty-three times in all," said he, calmly, as he drew a large black pocket-book from his breast, and took out a considerable roll of papers. "The earlier ones are less interesting," said he, turning them over. "It is about here, No. 14, that they begin to develop feeling. You see she commences to call me 'Caro Animale'-she meant to say Annibale, but, poor dear! she mistook. No. 15 is stronger- Animale Mio'-the same error; and here, in No. 17, she begins 'Diletto del mio cuore quando non ti vedo, non ti sento, il cielo stesso, non mi sorride piu. Il mio Tiranno'-that was you."

I caught hold of the poker with a convulsive grasp, but quick as thought he bounded back behind the table, and drew out a pistol, and cocked it. I saw that Gioberti's friend had his wits about him, and resumed the conversation by remarking that the documents he had shown me were not in my wife's handwriting.

"Very true," said he; "these, as you will perceive by the official stamp, are sworn copies, duly attested at the Prefettura-the originals are safe."

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And with what object," asked I, gasping-"safe for what?"

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For you, Illustrissimo," said he, bowing, "when you pay me two thousand francs for them."

"I'll knock your brains out first," said I, with another clutch at the poker, but the muzzle of the pistol was now directly in front of me.

"I am moderate in my demands, signor," said he, quietly; "there are men in my position would ask you twenty thousand; but I am a galantuomo "

"And the friend of Gioberti," added I, with a sneer.

"Precisely so," said he, bowing with much grace.

I will not weary you, dear reader, with my struggles-conflicts that almost cost me a seizure on the brain-but hasten to the result. I beat down the noble Count's demand to one-half, and for a thousand francs I possessed myself of the fatal originals, written unquestionably and indisputably by my wife's hand; and then, giving the Count a final piece of advice, never to let me see more of him, I hurried off to see Mrs O'Dowd.

She was out paying some bills, and only arrived a few minutes before dinner-hour.

"I want you, madam, for a moment here," said I, with something of Othello, in the last act, in my voice and demeanour.

"I suppose I can take off my bonnet and shawl first, Mr O'Dowd," said she, snappishly.

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"Exercises!

"Well, themes, if you like better; the Count made me make clean copies of them, with all his corrections, and send them to him every day here are the rough ones;" and she opened a drawer filled with a mass of papers all scrawled over and blotted. "And now, sir, once more, what do you mean?"

I did not wait to answer her, but rushed down to the landlord. "Where does that Count Castrocaro live?" I asked.

"Nowhere in particular, I believe, sir, and for the present he has left Turin-started for Genoa by the diligence five minutes ago. He's a Grand Galantuomo, sir," added he, as I stood stupefied.

"I am aware of that,” said I, as

I crept back to my room to finish my packing.

"Did you settle with the Count?" asked my wife at the door.

"Yes," said I, with my head buried in my trunk.

"And he was perfectly satisfied?” "Of course he was-he has every reason to be so."

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I am glad of it," said she, moving away-" he had a deal of trouble with those themes of mine. No one knows what they cost him." I could have told what they cost me; but I never did, till the present moment.

I need not say with what an appetite I dined on that day, nor with what abject humility I behaved to my wife, nor how I skulked down in the evening to the landlord to apologise for not being able to pay the bill before I left, an unexpected demand having left me short of cash. All these, seventeen years ago as they are, have not yet lost their bitterness, nor have I yet arrived at the time when I can think with composure of this friend of Gioberti.

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NOTHING can be more lonely than the situation of the Hall, and why a house of such size and substance had been built in such utter and absolute isolation it is hard to imagine. The village of Witch-hampton, which took its name from the mansion, is at least five miles from it. This village consists of a few grey houses clustering near a minute grey church built on a pastoral promontory of the river Walyso near the water's edge, that the church and the taller of the quaint tombstones, with a background of wooded hills, are mirrored in the stream at "flood."

Most of the inhabitants of those hoary little dwellings are fishermen -the fish of the river Waly has a certain celebrity, and finds a ready sale at large towns both "up" and "down stream."

Behind Witch-hampton village there is a narrow opening in the hills, a natural pass. Up this winds a rough and narrow lane, gradually ascending, though with many dips and dells, for about two miles, offering no opening to the right or left. In this lane the owls cry finely, calling to one another from tree-top to tree-top on either side-mocking at and hooting the lonely belated traveller. At the end of those two miles the lane takes a new aspect; it runs along level ground, is straightly fringed with somewhat meagre and miserable firs, and has on either hand waste and sterilelooking uplands, that, having at some time been under cultivation, have lost all the grace of wildness.

The lane ends at a gate, from which start two tracks; one, holding on over wold and through wood, leads to the village of Chine-dandon, which lies behind the Hall at a distance of some miles-that is

the right-hand track. The one to the left crosses an ugly bit of enclosed ground (the nature of the stones scattered over which seems to suggest that, at some time, some sort of habitation, a lodge perhaps, has stood there), to where lies an iron gate between two broken-down stone pillars. stone pillars. Stepping over this obstacle, I found that a grass-grown road, the presence of which was chiefly indicated by deep ruts, wound down and round a shoulder of the hill, and descended into a valley-or rather a green basin, which seemed as if it might at some time have been the bed of a lake-shut in on all sides by woodfringed heights rising abruptly against the sky. Through this valley brawled a stream, densely overhung by alder, hazel, and bramble, so clothed then with "old man's beard" (the downy seed-tufts of the clematis) that its winding course resembled a stray tress of some hoary giantess's hair streaking the November afternoon gloom of the valley.

For some time the track I followed kept beside this stream, but by-and-by, at what had seemed from a distance the end of the valley, it plunged into a wood, leaving the stream to the left, and gradually ascending. The wood ended at a gate of the same pattern as the one I had left a mile or two behind, but this still hung in its place by one rusty hinge. I found myself mounting towards the head of a narrow defile which was much choked up by an overgrown tangle of evergreen shrubs, chiefly cypress, Irish and English yew, and the darker-leaved kinds of laurel. Another gate, and then I stepped into the blackness of an avenue of pines, walking now along a road that

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