riage with Beatrice
should absolutely depend upon her brother's obtaining the knowledge
of Violante's retreat, and that marriage should be as conducive to his
interests as he thought he could make it, why--he did not then push
his deductions further, even to himself,--they seemed too black; but
he sighed heavily, and that sigh foreboded how weak would be honour
and virtue against avarice and ambition. Therefore, on all accounts,
Riccabocca was one of those cards in a sequence, which so calculating a
player would not throw out of his hand: it might serve for repique, at
the worst it might score well in the game. Intimacy with the Italian was
still part and parcel in that knowledge which was the synonym of power.

While the young man was thus meditating, on his road to Norwood,
Riccabocca and his Jemima were close conferring in their drawing-room.
And if you could have seen them, reader, you would have been seized with
equal surprise and curiosity: for some extraordinary communication had
certainly passed between them. Riccabocca was evidently much agitated,
and with emotions not familiar to him. The tears stood in his eyes at
the same time that a smile, the reverse of cynical or sardonic, curved
his lips; while his wife was leaning her head on his shoulder, her hand
clasped in his, and, by the expression of her face, you might guess
that he had paid her some very gratifying compliment, of a nature more
genuine and sincere than those which characterized his habitual hollow
and dissimulating gallantry. But just at this moment Giacomo entered,
and Jemima, with her native English modesty, withdrew in haste from
Riccabocca's sheltering side.

"Padrone," said Giacomo, who, whatever his astonishment at the
connubial position he had disturbed, was much too discreet to betray
it,--"Padrone, I see the young Englishman riding towards the house, and
I hope, when he arrives, you will not forget the alarming information I
gave to you this morning."

"Ah, ah!" said Riccabocca, his face falling. "If the signorina were but
married!"

"My very thought,--my constant thought!" exclaimed Riccabocca. "And you
really believe the young Englishman loves her?"

"Why else should he come, Excellency?" asked Giacomo, with great
naivete.

"Very true; why, indeed?" said Riccabocca. "Jemima, I cannot endure
the terrors I suffer on that poor child's account. I will open myself
frankly to Randal Leslie. And now, too, that which might have been a