ol myself all day long by
poring over records of a has-been, or even tracing out the limits of
what my ancestors possessed; but to play Prince at a mock levee--no, no,
Guglia, you must not ask me this.'

There were days when this humour was strong on him, and she said no
more.

CHAPTER XIX. TWO VISITORS

A FEW days after, and just as evening was falling, a travelling-carriage
halted at the park gate of the Cardinal's villa. Some slight injury to
the harness occasioned a brief delay, and the travellers descended and
proceeded leisurely at a walk towards the house. One was a very large,
heavily-built man, far advanced in life, with immense bushy eyebrows
of a brindled grey, giving to his face a darksome and almost forbidding
expression, though the mouth was well rounded, and of a character that
bespoke gentleness. He was much bent in the shoulders, and moved with
considerable difficulty; but there was yet in his whole figure and air
a certain dignity that announced the man of condition. Such, indeed, was
Sir Capel Crosbie, once a beau and ornament of the French court in the
days of the Regency. The other was a spare, thin, but yet wiry-looking
man of about sixty-five or six, deeply pitted with small-pox, and
disfigured by a strong squint, which, as the motions of his face were
quick, imparted a character of restless activity and impatience to his
appearance, that his nature, indeed, could not contradict. He was known
as--that is, his passport called him--Mr. Simon Purcell; but he had
many passports, and was frequently a grandee of Spain, a French abbe, a
cabinet courier of Russia, and a travelling monk, these travesties being
all easy to one who spoke fluently every dialect of every continental
language and seemed to enjoy the necessity of a deception. You could
mark at once in his gestures and his tone as he came forward the stamp
of one who talked much and well. There was ready self-possession, that
jaunty cheerfulness dashed with a certain earnest force, that bespoke
the man who had achieved conversational success, and felt his influence
in it.

The accident to the harness had seemingly interrupted an earnest
conversation, for no sooner was he on the ground than Purcell resumed:
'Take _my_ word for it, baronet; it is always a bad game that does not
admit of being played in two ways---the towns to which only one road
leads are never worth visiting.'

The other shook his head; but it was difficult to say whet