"I wish she were hanged, with all my heart," muttered Fair thorn, "coming here to do such astonishing mischief! But, Sir, I can't obey you; 'tis no use talking. You must get some one else. Parson Morley will do it—with pleasure, too, no doubt; or that hobbling old man who I suspect to be a conjurer. Who knows but what he may get knocked on the head as he is looking on with his wicked one eye; and then there will be an end of him, too, which would be a great satisfaction!"
"Pshaw, my dear Dick; there is no one else I can ask but you. The Parson would argue; I've had enough of his arguings; and the old man is the last whom my own arguings could deceive. Fiat justitia."
"Don't, Sir, don't; you are breaking my heart!—'tis a shame, Sir," sobbed the poor faithful rebel.
"Well, Dick, then I must see it done myself; and you shall go on first to Sorento, and hire some villa to suit us. I don't see why Lionel should not be married next week; then the house will be clear. And—yes—it was cowardly in me to shrink. Mine be the task. Shame on me to yield it to another. Go back to thy flute, Dick.
"'Neque tibias
Euterpe cohibet, nec Polyhymnia
Lesboum refugit tendere barbiton!'"
At that last remorseless shaft from the Horatian quiver, "Venenatis gravida sagittis," Fairthorn could stand ground no longer; there was a shamble—a plunge—and once more the man was vanished.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Flute-player shows how little Music hath power to soothe the savage breast—of a Musician.
Fairthorn found himself on the very spot in which, more than five years ago, Lionel, stung by Fairthorn's own incontinent prickles, had been discovered by Darrell. There he threw himself on the ground, as the boy had done; there, like the boy, he brooded moodily, bitterly—sore with the world and himself. To that letter, written on the day that Darrell had so shocked him, and on which letter he had counted as a last forlorn hope, no answer had been given. In an hour or so, Lionel would
