"do you think, love, that you could
put off the end of the world a little longer, or must we make haste in
order to be in time?"

"How wicked you are!" said Miss Jemima, turning aside. Some few minutes
afterwards, Mrs. Dale contrived it so that Dr. Riccabocca and herself
were in a farther corner of the room, looking at a picture said to be by
Wouvermans.

MRS. DALE.--"She is very amiable, Jemima, is she not?"

RICCABOCCA.--"Exceedingly so. Very fine battle-piece!"

MRS. DALE.--"So kind-hearted."

RICCABOCCA.--"All ladies are. How naturally that warrior makes his
desperate cut at the runaway!"

MRS. DALE.--"She is not what is called regularly handsome, but she has
something very winning."

RICCABOCCA (with a smile).--"So winning, that it is strange she is not
won. That gray mare in the foreground stands out very boldly!"

MRS. DALE (distrusting the smile of Riccabocca, and throwing in a more
effective grape-charge).--"Not won yet; and it is strange! she will have
a very pretty fortune."

RICCABOCCA.--"Ah!"

MRS. DALE. "Six thousand pounds, I dare say,--certainly four."

RICCABOCCA (suppressing a sigh, and with his wonted address).--"If Mrs.
Dale were still single, she would never need a friend to say what her
portion might be; but Miss Jemima is so good that I am quite sure it is
not Miss Jemima's fault that she is still--Miss Jemima!"

The foreigner slipped away as he spoke, and sat himself down beside the
whist-players.

Mrs. Dale was disappointed, but certainly not offended. "It would be
such a good thing for both," muttered she, almost inaudibly.

"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he was undressing that night in the
large, comfortable, well-carpeted English bedroom, with that great
English four-posted bed in the recess which seems made to shame folks
out of single blessedness, "Giacomo, I have had this evening the offer
of probably L6000, certainly of four thousand."

"Cosa meravigliosa!"--["Miraculous thing."]--exclaimed Jackeymo, and he
crossed himself with great fervour. "Six thousand pounds English!
why, that must be a hundred thousand--blockhead that I am!--more than
L150,000 Milanese!" And Jackeymo, who was considerably enlivened by the
squire's ale, commenced a series of gesticulations and capers, in the
midst of which he stopped and cried, "But not for nothing?"

"Nothing! no!"

"These mercenary English! the Government wants to bribe you?"

"That's not it."

"The priests want you to tur