t; "did you really mean to go to
Sicily when we started?"

"Ah, vous m'en demandez trop! Let me put a question first. Did you come
with me quite--platonically?"

"I don't know what you mean by that. I wanted to come abroad."

"I suspect we've each been playing our little game."

"Speak for yourself. I made no secret whatever of my desiring to be here
a while."

"Yes, I remember you said you wished to see the Minister of Foreign
Affairs."

"I've seen him three times. He's very amusing."

"I think you've forgotten what you came for," said Ralph.

"Perhaps I have," his companion answered rather gravely.

These two were gentlemen of a race which is not distinguished by the
absence of reserve, and they had travelled together from London to Rome
without an allusion to matters that were uppermost in the mind of each.
There was an old subject they had once discussed, but it had lost its
recognised place in their attention, and even after their arrival
in Rome, where many things led back to it, they had kept the same
half-diffident, half-confident silence.

"I recommend you to get the doctor's consent, all the same," Lord
Warburton went on, abruptly, after an interval.

"The doctor's consent will spoil it. I never have it when I can help
it."

"What then does Mrs. Osmond think?" Ralph's friend demanded. "I've not
told her. She'll probably say that Rome's too cold and even offer to go
with me to Catania. She's capable of that."

"In your place I should like it."

"Her husband won't like it."

"Ah well, I can fancy that; though it seems to me you're not bound to
mind his likings. They're his affair."

"I don't want to make any more trouble between them," said Ralph.

"Is there so much already?"

"There's complete preparation for it. Her going off with me would make
the explosion. Osmond isn't fond of his wife's cousin."

"Then of course he'd make a row. But won't he make a row if you stop
here?"

"That's what I want to see. He made one the last time I was in Rome, and
then I thought it my duty to disappear. Now I think it's my duty to stop
and defend her."

"My dear Touchett, your defensive powers--!" Lord Warburton began with
a smile. But he saw something in his companion's face that checked him.
"Your duty, in these premises, seems to me rather a nice question," he
observed instead.

Ralph for a short time answered nothing. "It's true that my defensive
powers are small," he returned at last; "but as