e
with a wife he did not love; but he knew also that in marrying a woman
who was indifferent to him, he would be engaging to play a part for life
in the most fearful of all plays--the part of a man who strives to bear
bravely the galling of a chain he is too honourable to break.

It was four o'clock in the morning when Giovanni went to bed; and even
then he slept little, for his dreams were disturbed. Once he thought he
stood upon a green lawn with a sword in his hand, and the blood upon its
point, his opponent lying at his feet. Again, he thought he was alone in
a vast drawing-room, and a dark woman came and spoke gently to him,
saying, "Marry her for my sake." He awoke with a groan. The church clocks
were striking eight, and the meet was at eleven, five miles beyond the
Porta Pia. Giovanni started up and rang for his servant.

CHAPTER IV.

It was a beautiful day, and half Rome turned out to see the meet, not
because it was in any way different from other meets, but because it
chanced that society had a fancy to attend it. Society is very like a
fever patient in a delirium; it is rarely accountable for its actions; it
scarcely ever knows what it is saying; and occasionally, without the
least warning or premeditation, it leaps out of bed at an early hour of
the morning and rushes frantically in pursuit of its last hallucination.
The main difference is, that whereas a man in a fever has a nurse,
society has none.

On the present occasion every one had suddenly conceived the idea of
going to the meet, and the long road beyond the Porta Pia was dotted for
miles with equipages of every description, from the four-in-hand of
Prince Valdarno to the humble donkey-cart of the caterer who sells
messes of boiled beans, and bread and cheese, and salad to the grooms--an
institution not connected in the English mind with hunting. One after
another the vehicles rolled out along the road, past Sant' Agnese, down
the hill and across the Ponte Nomentana, and far up beyond to a place
where three roads met and there was a broad open stretch of wet, withered
grass. Here the carriages turned in and ranged themselves side by side,
as though they were pausing in the afternoon drive upon the Pincio,
instead of being five miles out upon the broad Campagna.

To describe the mountains to southward of Rome would be an insult to
nature; to describe a meet would be an affront to civilised readers of
the English language. The one is too f