ent
occasion. It must have been, I fancy, with a vague hope of "laying" this
spectre that he now set himself with eagerness to discover where or
how Temple had died. He remembered that Royston tradition said he had
succumbed at Naples in the plague of 1752, but an idea seized him that
this was not the case; indeed I half suspect his fancy unconsciously
pictured that evil man as still alive. The methods by which he
eventually discovered the skeleton, or learnt the episodes which
preceded Temple's death, I do not know. He promised to tell me some
day at length, but a sudden death prevented his ever doing so. The
facts as he narrated them, and as I have little doubt they actually
occurred, were these: Adrian Temple, after Jocelyn's departure, had
made a confidant of one Palamede Domacavalli, a scion of a splendid
Parthenopean family of that name. Palamede had a palace in the heart of
Naples, and was Temple's equal in age and also in his great wealth. The
two men became boon companions, associated in all kinds of wickedness
and excess. At length Palamede married a beautiful girl named Olimpia
Aldobrandini, who was also of the noblest lineage; but the intimacy
between him and Temple was not interrupted. About a year subsequent to
this marriage dancing was going on after a splendid banquet in the great
hall of the Palazzo Domacavalli. Adrian, who was a favoured guest,
called to the musicians in the gallery to play the "Areopagita" suite,
and danced it with Olimpia, the wife of his host. The _Gagliarda_ was
reached but never finished, for near the end of the second movement
Palamede from behind drove a stiletto into his friend's heart. He had
found out that day that Adrian had not spared even Olimpia's honour.

I have endeavoured to condense into a connected story the facts learnt
piecemeal from Sir John in conversation. To a certain extent they
supplied, if not an explanation, at least an account of the change
that had come over my friend. But only to a certain extent; there the
explanation broke down and I was left baffled. I could imagine that a
life of unwholesome surroundings and disordered studies might in time
produce such a loss of mental tone as would lead in turn to moral
_acolasia_, sensual excess, and physical ruin. But in Sir John's case
the cause was not adequate; he had, so far as I know, never wholly given
the reins to sensuality, and the change was too abrupt and the breakdown
of body and mind too complete to