deep into his little round eye, expecting to read there the recipe for the infusion of a sleeping potion into café au lait. My room that night was close and hot, and my bed none of the best. I tossed about in a broken sleep. I dreamed that I was lying ill in a poor tavern at Naples, waiting, waiting with an aching heart, for the arrival from the Baths of Lucca of a certain young lady, who had been forced by her mother, Mrs. B. of Philadelphia, into a cruel marriage with a wealthy Tuscan contadino. At last I seemed to hear a great noise without and a step on the stairs; through the opened door rushed in my promessa sposa. Her blue eyes were bright with tears, and she wore a flounced black dress trimmed with crimson silk. The next moment she was kneeling at my bedside crying, "Ernesto, Ernesto!" At this point I awoke into the early morning. The noise of horses and wheels and voices came up from outside. I sprang from my bed and stepped to my open window. The huge, high-piled, yellow diligence from Domo d'Ossola had halted before the inn. The door of the coupé was open; from the aperture half emerged the Personage. "A peasant," she had called him, but he was well dicrotti, though he had counted his lire and taken the diligence. He struck me as of an odd type for an Italian: dark sandy hair, a little sandy moustache, waxed at the ends, and sandy whiskers à l'Anglaise. He had a broad face, a large nose, and a small keen eye, without any visible brows. He wore a yellow silk handkerchief tied as a nightcap about his head, and in spite of the heat he was very much muffled. On the steps stood Bonifazio, cap in hand, smiling and obsequious.
"Is there a lady here?" demanded the gentleman from the coupé. "A lady alone—good-looking—with little luggage?"
"No lady, Signore," said Bonifazio. "Alas! I have an empty house. If eccellenza would like to descend—"
"Have you had a lady—yesterday, last night? Don't lie."
"We had three, eccellenza, a week ago—three Scotch
