dread so much (though I own that I must
think unreasonably) this wicked, dangerous man, it would be the happiest
thing in the world to see dear Violante well married; because, you see,
if she is married to one person she cannot be married to another; and
all fear of this count, as you say, would be at an end."

"You cannot express yourself better. It is a great comfort to unbosom
one's-self to a wife, after all," quoth Riccabocca.

"But," said the wife, after a grateful kiss,--"but where and how can we
find a husband suitable to the rank of your daughter?"

"There! there! there!" cried Riccabocca, pushing back his chair to the
farther end of the room, "that comes of unbosoming one's-self! Out flies
one secret; it is opening the lid of Pandora's box; one is betrayed,
ruined, undone!"

"Why, there's not a soul that can hear us!" said Mrs. Riccabocca,
soothingly.

"'That's chance, ma'am! If you once contract the habit of blabbing out
a secret when nobody's by, how on earth can you resist it when you
have the pleasurable excitement of telling it to all the world? Vanity,
vanity,--woman's vanity! Woman never could withstand rank,--never!"
The doctor went on railing for a quarter of an hour, and was very
reluctantly appeased by Mrs. Riccabocca's repeated and tearful
assurances that she would never even whisper to herself that her husband
had ever held any other rank than that of doctor. Riccabocca, with a
dubious shake of the head, renewed,

"I have done with all pomp and pretension. Besides, the young man is a
born gentleman: he seems in good circumstances; he has energy and latent
ambition; he is akin to L'Estrange's intimate friend: he seems attached
to Violante. I don't think it probable that we could do better. Nay, if
Peschiera fears that I shall be restored to my country, and I learn
the wherefore, and the ground to take, through this young man--why,
gratitude is the first virtue of the noble!"

"You speak, then, of Mr. Leslie?"

"To be sure--of whom else?"

Mrs. Riccabocca leaned her cheek on her hand thoughtfully. "Now you have
told me that, I will observe him with different eyes."

"Anima mia, I don't see how the difference of your eyes will alter the
object they look upon!" grumbled Riccabocca, shaking the ashes out of
his pipe.

"The object alters when we see it in a different point of view!" replied
Jemima, modestly. "This thread does very well when I look at it in order
to sew on a button, but I s