threw him over the cliff the night
we broke the jail. There, let me write it for you," said he, taking the
pencil from Cutbill's hand, and writing the word Onofrio in a large bold
character.

"Keep that pencil-case, will you, as a souvenir?" said Cutbill.

"Give me ten francs instead, and I'll remember you when I pay for my
dinner," said he, with a grating laugh; and he took the handful of loose
silver Cutbill offered him, and thrust it into his pocket. "Is n't that
Souza we see in the valley there? Yes; I remember it well. I'll go no
further with you--there's a police-station where I had trouble once.
I 'll take the cross-path here that leads down to the Pinarola Road. I
thank you heartily. I wanted a little good-nature much when you overtook
me. Goodbye."

He leaped from the carriage as he spoke, and crossing the little
embankment of the road, descended a steep slope, and was out of sight
almost in an instant.

CHAPTER LXVIII. A MEETING AND A PARTING

In the same room where Pracontal and Longworth had parted in anger, the
two men, reconciled and once more friends, sat over their dessert and
a cigar. The handsome reparation Pracontal had offered in a letter
had been frankly and generously met, and it is probable that their
friendship was only the more strongly ratified by the incident.

They were both dressed with unusual care, for Lady Augusta "received" a
few intimate friends on that evening, and Pracontal was to be presented
to them in his quality of accepted suitor.

"I think," said Longworth, laughingly, "it is the sort of ordeal most
Englishmen would feel very awkward in. You are trotted out for the
inspection of a critical public, who are to declare what they think
of your eyes and your whiskers, if they augur well of your temper, and
whether, on the whole, you are the sort of person to whom a woman might
confide her fate and future."

"You talk as if I were to be sent before a jury and risk a sentence,"
said Pracontal, with a slight irritation in his tone.

"It is something very like it."

"And I say, there is no resemblance whatever."

"Don't you remember what Lord Byron in one of his letters says of a
memorable drive through Ravenna one evening, where he was presented as
the accepted?--There's that hang-dog rascal that followed us through the
gardens of the Vatican this morning, there he is again, sitting directly
in front of our window, and staring at us."

"Well, I take it those benches