How free is all the intercourse of those who seem to have taken a vow with themselves never to meet each other again! With what humorous zest do they enjoy the oddities of this one, or the eccentricities of that, making up little knots and cliques, to be changed or dissolved within the day, and actually living on the eventualities of the hour, for their confidences! The contrasts that would repel in ordinary life, the disparities that would discourage, have actually invited intimacy; and people agree to associate, even familiarly, with those whom, in the recognized order of their daily existence, they would have as coldly repelled.

There was little to bind those together whom we have represented as seated under the chestnut-trees at the Bagni de Lucca. They entertained their suspicions and distrusts and misgivings of each other to a liberal extent; they wasted no charities in their estimate of each other; and wherever posed by a difficulty, they did not lend to the interpretation any undue amount of generosity; nay, they even went further, and argued from little peculiarities of dress, manner, and demeanor, to the whole antecedents of him they criticised, and took especial pains in their moments of confidence to declare that they had only met Mr.------ for the first time at Ems, and never saw Mrs.------ till they were overtaken by the snow-storm on the Splugen.

Such-like was the company who now, headed by the obsequious butler, strolled leisurely through the spacious saloons of the Villa Caprini.

Who is there, in this universal vagabondage, has not made one of such groups? Where is the man that has not strolled, "John Murray" in hand, along his Dresden, his Venice, or his Rome; staring at ceilings, and gazing ruefully at time-discolored frescos,--grieved to acknowledge to his own heart how little he could catch of a connoisseur's enthusiasm or an antiquarian's fervor,--wondering within himself wherefore he could not feel like that other man whose raptures he was reading, and with sore misgivings that some nice sense had been omitted in his nature?

Wonderfully poignant and painful things are these little appeals to an inner consciousness. How far such sentiments were distributed amongst those who now lounged and stared through _salon_ and gallery, we must leave to the reader's own appreciation. They looked pleased, convinced, and astonished, and, be it confessed, "bored" in turn; they were called upon to admire much they did not care for, and wonder at many things which did not astonish them; they were often referred to histories which they had forgotten, if they ever knew them, and to names of whose celebrity they were ignorant; and it was with a most honest sense of relief they saw themselves reach the last room of the suite, where a few cabinet pictures and some rare carvings in ivory alone claimed their attention.

"A 'Virgin and Child,' by Murillo," said the guide.

"The ninth 'Virgin and Child,' by all that's holy!" said Mr. O'Shea.

"The ninth we have seen to-day!"

"The blue drapery, ladies and gentlemen," continued the inexorable describer, "is particularly noticed. It is 'glazed' in a manner only known to Murillo."

"I 'm glad of it, and I hope the secret died with him," cried Mr.

Morgan. "It looks for all the world like a bathing-dress."

"The child squints. Don't he squint?" exclaimed Mosely.

"Oh, for shame!" cried Mrs. Morris. "Mr. Layton is quite shocked with your profane criticism."

"I did not hear it, I assure you," said that gentleman, as he arose from a long and close contemplation of a "St. John," by Salvator.

"'St. John preaching in the Wilderness!'" said Quack-inboss; "too tame for my taste. He don't seem to roll up his sleeves to the work,--does he?"

"It's not stump-oratory, surely?" said Layton, with a quiet smile.

"Ain't it, though! Well, stranger, I'm in a considerable unmixed error if it is not! You'd like to maintain that because a man does n't rise up from a velvet cushion and lay his hand upon a grand railing, all carved with grotesque intricacies, all his sentiments must needs be commonplace and vulgar; but I 'm here to tell you, sir, that you 'd hear grander things, nobler things, and greater things from a moss-covered old tree-stump in a western pine-forest, by the mouth of a plain, hardy son of hard toil, than you've often listened to in what you call your place in Parliament Now, that's a fact!"

There was that amount of energy in the way these words were uttered that seemed to say, if carried further, the discussion might become contentious.

Mr. Layton did not show any disposition to accept the gage of battle, but turned to seek for his pupil.

"You 're looking for the Marquis, Mr. Layton," asked Mrs. Morris, "ain't you? I think you'll find him in the shrubberies, for he said all this only bored him, and he 'd go and look for a cool spot to smoke his cigar."

"That's what it all comes to," said Morgan, as soon as Layton had left the room; "that's the whole of it! You pay a fellow--a 'double first'

something or other from Oxford or Cambridge--five hundred a year to go abroad with your son, and all he teaches him is to choose a cheroot."

"And smoke it, Tom," chimed in Mrs. Morgan.

"There ain't no harm in a weed, sir, I hope?" said Quackinboss. "The thinkers of this earth are most of 'em smoking men. What do you say, sir, to Humboldt, Niebuhr, your own Bulwer, and all our people, from John C. Colhoun to Daniel Webster? When a man puts a cigar between his lips, he as good as says, 'I 'm a-reflecting,--I 'm not in no ways to be broke in upon.' It's his own fault, sir, if he does n't think, for he has in a manner shut the door to keep out intruders."

"Filthy custom!" muttered Mr. Morgan, with a garbled sentence, in which the word "America" was half audible.

"What's this he's saying about eating,--this Italian fellow?" said Mr.

Mosely, as a servant addressed him in a foreign language.

"It is a polite invitation to a luncheon," said Mrs. Morris, modestly turning to her fellow-travellers for their decision.

"Do any of us know our host?" asked Mr. OShea. "He is a Sir William Heathcote."

"There was a director of the Central Trunk line of that name, who failed for half a million sterling," whispered Morgan; "should n't wonder if it were he."

"All the more certain to give us a jolly feed, if he be!" chuckled Mosely. "I vote we accept."

"That of course," said Mrs. Morris.

"Well, I know him, I reckon," drawled out Quackinboss; "and I rayther suspect you owe this here politeness to _my_ company. Yes, sir!" said he, half fiercely, to O'Shea, upon whose face a sort of incredulous smile was breaking,--"yes, sir!"

"Being our own countryman, sir,--an Englishman,--I suspect," said Mr.

Morgan, with warmth, "that the hospitality has been extended to us on wider grounds."

"But why should we dispute about the matter at all?" mildly remarked Mrs. Morris. "Let us say yes, and be grateful."

"There's good sense in that," chimed in Mosely, "and I second it."

"Carried with unanimity," said O'Shea, as, turning to the servant, he muttered something in broken French.

"Well, I'm sure, I never!" mumbled Quackinboss to himself; but what he meant, or to what new circumstance in his life's experience he alluded, there is unhappily no explanation in this history; but he followed the rest with a drooping head and an air of half-melancholy resignation that was not by any means unusual with him.

CHAPTER V. ACCIDENTS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES

When the young Marquis had made his escape from sightseeing, and all its attendant inflictions, he was mainly bent on what he would himself have called being "very jolly,"--that is to say, going his own way unmolested, strolling the road he fancied, and following out his own thoughts. Not that these same thoughts absolutely needed for their exercise or development any extraordinary advantages of solitude and retirement. He was no deep-minded sage, revolving worlds to come,--no poet, in search of the inspiring influence of nature,--no subtle politician, balancing the good and evil of some nice legislation. He was simply one of those many thousand England yearly turns out from her public schools of fine, dashing, free-hearted, careless boys, whose most marked feature in character is a wholesome horror of all that is mean or shabby. Less than a year before, he had been a midshipman in her Majesty's gun-boat "Mosquito;" the death of an elder brother had made him a Marquis, with the future prospect of several thousands a year.

He had scarcely seen or known his brother, so he grieved very little for his loss, but he sorrowed sincerely over the change of fortune that called him from his sea life and companions to an "on-shore" existence, and instead of the gun-room and its gay guests, gave him the proprieties of station and the requirements of high rank. One of his guardians thought he ought to go into the Guards; another advised a university; both agreed upon a tutor, and Mr. Layton was found, a young man of small fortune, whose health, injured by over-reading for honors, required change of scene and rest. They had been companions for a very short time, but had, as the young Lord would have said, "hit it off" admirably together; that is to say, partly from a just appreciation of his pupil, and partly out of a natural indolence of disposition, Layton interfered very little with him, gave him no troublesome tasks, imposed no actual studies, but contented himself with a careful watch over the boy's disposition, a gentle, scarce perceptible correction of his faults, and an honest zeal to develop any generous trait in his nature, little mindful of the disappointments his trustfulness must incur. Layton's theory was that we all become wise too early in life, and that the world's lessons should not be too soon implanted in a fresh unsuspecting nature. His system was not destined to be sorely tested in the present case. Harry Montserrat, Marquis of Agincourt, was a fortunate subject to illustrate it by. There never was a less suspectful nature; he was frank, generous, and brave; his faults were those of a hot, fiery temper, and a disposition to resent, too early and too far, what with a little patience he might have tolerated or even forgiven.

The fault, however, which Layton was more particularly guardful against, was a certain over-consciousness of his station and its power, which gradually began to show itself.

In his first experience of altered fortune he did nothing but regret the past. It was no compensation to him for his careless sea-life, with all its pleasant associations, to become of a sudden invested with station, and treated with what he deemed over-deference. His reefer's jacket was pleasanter "wear" than his padded frock-coat; the nimble boy who waited on him in the gun-room he thought a far smarter attendant than his obsequious valet; and, with all his midshipman's love of money-spending and squandering, the charm of extravagance was gone when there were no messmates to partake of it; nor did his well-groomed nag and his well-dressed tiger suggest one-half the enjoyment he had often felt in a pony ride over the cliffs of Malta, with some others of his mess, where falls were rife and tumbles frequent. These, I say, were first thoughts, but gradually others took their places. The enervation of a life of ease began soon to show itself, and he felt the power of a certain station.

In the allowance his guardian made him, he had a far greater sum at his disposal than he ever possessed before; and in the title of his rank he soon discovered a magic that made the world beneath him very deferential and very obliging.

"That boy has been very ill brought up, Mr. Layton; it will be your chief care to instil into him proper notions of the place he is to occupy one of these days," said an old Earl, one of his guardians, and who was most eager that every trace of his sea life should be eradicated.

"Don't let him get spoiled, Layton, because he's a Lord," said the other guardian, who was an old Admiral. "There's good stuff in the lad, and it would be a thousand pities it should be corrupted."

Layton did his best to obey each; but the task had its difficulties. As to the boy himself, the past and the present, the good and the evil, the frank young middy and the rich lordling, warred and contended in his nature; nor was it very certain at any moment which would ultimately gain the mastery. Such, without dwelling more minutely, was he who now strolled along through shrubbery and parterre, half listless as to the way, but very happy withal, and very light-hearted.

There was something in the scene that recalled England to his mind.

There were more trees and turf than usually are found in Italian landscape, and there was, half hidden between hazel and alder, a clear, bright river, that brawled and fretted over rocks, or deepened into dark pools, alternately. How the circling eddies of a fast-flowing stream do appeal to young hearts! what music do they hear in the gushing waters!

what a story is there in that silvery current as it courses along through waving meadows, or beneath tall mountains, and along some dark and narrow gorge, emblem of life itself in its light and shade, its peaceful intervals and its hours of struggle and conflict.

Forcing his way through the brushwood that guarded the banks, the boy gained a little ledge of rock, against which the current swept with violence, and then careered onward over a shallow, gravelly bed till lost in another bend of the stream. Just as Agincourt reached the rock, he spied a fishing-rod deeply and securely fastened in one of its fissures, but whose taper point was now bending like a whip, and springing violently under the struggling effort of a strong fish. He was nothing of an angler. Of honest "Izaak" and his gentle craft he absolutely knew nought, and of all the mysteries of hackles and green drakes he was utterly ignorant; but his sailor instinct could tell him when a spar was about to break, and this he now saw to be the case. The strain was great, and every jerk now threatened to snap either line or rod. He looked hurriedly around him for the fisherman, whose interests were in such grave peril; but seeing no one near, he endeavored to withdraw the rod. While he thus struggled, for it was fastened with care, the efforts of the fish to escape became more and more violent, and at last, just as the boy had succeeded in his task, a strong spring from the fish snapped the rod near the tip, and at the same instant snatched it from the youth's hand into the stream. Without a second's hesitation, Agincourt dashed into the river, which rose nearly to his shoulders, and, after a vigorous pursuit, reached the rod, but only as the fish bad broken the strong gut in two, and made his escape up the rapid current.

The boy was toilfully clambering up the bank, with the broken rod in his hand, when a somewhat angry summons in Italian met his ears. It was time enough, he thought, to look for the speaker when he had gained dry land; so he patiently fought his way upwards, and at last, out of breath and exhausted, threw himself full length in the deep grass of the bank.