whom were these letters addressed?"

"To his father, Montagu Bramieigh, Portland Place, London. I have it
all in my note-book."

"And these appeals were responded to?"

"Not so satisfactorily as one might wish. The replies were flat
refusals to give money, and rather unpleasant menaces as to police
measures if the insistence were continued.

"You have some of these letters?"

"The lawyer has, I think, four of them. The last contained a bank order
for five hundred francs, payable to Giacomo Lami, or order."

"Who was Lami?"

"Lami was the name of my grandmother; her father was Giacomo. He was
the old fresco-painter who came over from Rome to paint the walls
of that great house yonder, and it was his daughter that Bramleigh
married."

"Which Bramleigh was the father of the present possessor of Castello?"

"Precisely. Montagu Bramleigh married my grandmother here in Ireland,
and when the troubles broke out, either to save her father from the laws
or to get rid of him, managed to smuggle him out of the country over to
Holland--the last supposition, and the more likely, is that he sent his
wife off with her father."

"What evidence is there of this marriage?"

"It was registered in some parish authority; at least so old Giacomo's
journal records, for we have the journal, and without it we might never
have known of our claim; but besides that, there are two letters of
Montagu Bramleigh's to my grandmother, written when he had occasion
to leave her about ten days after their marriage, and they begin,
'My dearest wife.' and are signed, 'Your affectionate husband, M.
Bramleigh.' The lawyer has all these."

"How did it come about that a rich London banker, as Bramleigh was,
should ally himself with the daughter of a working Italian tradesman?"

"Here's the story as conveyed by old Giacomo's notes. Bramleigh came
over here to look after the progress of the works for a great man, a
bishop and a lord marquis too, who was the owner of the place; he made
the acquaintance of Lami and his daughters: there were two; the younger
only a child, however. The eldest, Enrichetta, was very beautiful, so
beautiful indeed, that Giacomo was eternally introducing her head
into all his frescos; she was a blonde Italian, and made a most lovely
Madonna. Old Giacomo's journal mentions no less than eight altar-pieces
where she figures, not to say that she takes her place pretty frequently
in heathen society also, and if I be rightly inf