of art. The two made
endless expeditions together to small provincial towns, to remote villas
in the Apuan or Pisan Alps, to _palazzi_ in Verona, or Lucca, or Siena.
Melrose indeed had not been long in finding out that the little artist
was both a poor judge and a bad agent. Netta's cheek always flamed when
she thought of her father's boastings and blunderings, and of the way
in which Edmund had come to treat him. And now the Smeath family were
just as poor as ever again. Her little sisters had scarcely a dress to
their backs; and she was certain her mother was both half-starved and
over-worked. Edmund had not been at all kind to them since her
marriage--not at all!

How had he come to marry her? She was well aware that it was an
extraordinary proceeding on his part. He was well born on both sides,
and, by common report among the English residents in Florence, enormously
rich, though his miserly habits had been very evident even in the first
days of their acquaintance. He might no doubt have married anybody he
pleased; if he would only have taken the trouble. But nothing would
induce him to take any trouble--socially. He resented the demands and
standards of his equals; turned his back entirely on normal English
society at home and abroad; and preferred, it seemed, to live with his
inferiors, where his manners might be as casual, and his dress as
careless as he pleased. The queer evenings and the queer people in their
horrid little flat had really amused him. Then he had been ill, and mama
had nursed him; and she, Netta, had taken him a pot of carnations while
he was still laid up; and so on. She had been really pretty in those
days; much prettier than she had ever been since the baby's birth. She
had been attractive too, simply because she was young, healthy,
talkative, and forthcoming; goaded always by the hope of marriage, and
money, and escape from home. His wooing had been of the most despotical
and patronizing kind; not the kind that a proud girl would have put up
with. Still there had been wooing; a few presents; a frugal cheque for
the trousseau; and a honeymoon fortnight at Sorrento.

Why had he done it?--just for a whim?--or to spite his English family,
some member of which would occasionally turn up in Florence and try to
put in claims upon him--claims which infuriated him? He was the most
wilful and incalculable of men; caring nothing, apparently, one day for
position and conventionality, and boasting extra