ormed, she is the centre
figure of a 'fresco' in this very house of Castello, in a small octagon
tower, the whole of which Lami painted with his own hand. Bramleigh fell
in love with this girl and married her."

"But she was a Catholic."

"No. Lami was originally a Waldensian, and held some sort of faith, I
don't exactly know what, that claimed affinity with the English Church;
at all events, the vicar here, a certain Robert Mathews--his name is in
the precious journal--married them, and man and wife they were."

"When and how did all these facts come to your knowledge?"

"As to the when and the how, the same answer will suffice. I was
serving as sous-lieutenant of cavalry in Africa when news reached me
that the 'Astradella,' the ship in which my father sailed, was lost off
the Cape Verde islands, with all on board. I hastened off to Naples,
where a Mr. Bolton lived, who was chief owner of the vessel, to hear
what tidings had reached him of the disaster, and to learn something of
my father's affairs, for he had been, if I might employ so fine a word
for so small a function, his banker for years. Indeed, but for Bolton's
friendship and protection--how earned I never knew--my father would have
come to grief years before, for he was a thorough Italian, and always up
to the neck in conspiracies; he had been in that Bonapartist affair at
Home; was a Carbonaro and a Camorrist, and Heaven knows what besides.
And though Bolton was a man very unlikely to sympathize with these
opinions, I take it my respected parent must have been a _bon diable_
that men who knew him would not willingly see wrecked and ruined. Bolton
was most kind to myself personally. He received me with many signs of
friendship, and without troubling me with any more details of law than
were positively unavoidable, put me in possession of the little my
father had left behind him, which consisted of a few hundred francs of
savings and an old chest, with some older clothes and a mass of papers
and letters--dangerous enough, as I discovered, to have compromised
scores of people--and a strange old manuscript book, clasped and locked,
called the 'Diary of Giacomo Lami,' with matter in it for half a dozen
romances; for Giacomo, too, had the conspirator's taste, had known
Danton intimately, and was deep in the confidence of all the Irish
republicans who were affiliated with the French revolutionary party. But
besides this the book contained a quantity of original l