der his eyes,
and even his lips had lost their color.

"A week ago, Signor," he remarked, "we occupied these same seats here."

"I remember it," Lord St. Maurice replied quietly.

"It is well. It is of the events which have followed that night that I
desire to speak, if you, Signor, will grant me a few moments of your
time?"

"Certainly," the Englishman replied courteously. After all, perhaps the
fellow did not mean to quarrel.

"I regret exceedingly having to trouble you, Signor, with a little
personal history," the Sicilian continued. "I must tell you, at the
commencement, that for five years I have been a suitor for the hand of
the Signorina Adrienne Cartuccio, my cousin."

"Second cousin, I believe," Lord St. Maurice interposed.

The Sicilian waved his hand. It was of no consequence.

"Certain political differences with the Imperial party at Rome," he
continued, "culminated two years ago in my banishment from Italy and
Sicily. You, I believe, Lord St. Maurice, are of ancient family, and it
is possible that you may understand to some extent the bitterness of
exile from a country and a home which has been the seat of my family for
nearly a thousand years. Such a sentence is not banishment as the world
understands it; it is a living death! But, Signor, it was not all. It
was not even the worst. Alas, that I, a Marioni, should live to confess
it! But to be parted from the woman I love was even a sorer trial. Yet I
endured it. I endured it; hoping against hope for a recall. My sister
and I were orphans. She made her home with the Signorina Cartuccio. Thus
I had news of her continually. Sometimes my cousin herself wrote to me.
It was these letters which preserved my reason, and consciously or
unconsciously, they breathed to me ever of hope.

"Not Adrienne's, I'll swear," the Englishman muttered to himself. He was
a true Briton, and there was plenty of dormant jealousy not very far
from the surface.

The Sicilian heard the words, and his eyes flashed.

"The Signorina Cartuccio, if you please, Signor," he remarked coldly.
"We are in a public place."

Lord St. Maurice felt that he could afford to accept the rebuke, and he
bowed his head.

"My remark was not intended to be audible!" he declared.

"For two years I bore with my wretched life," the Sicilian continued,
"but at last my endurance came to an end. I determined to risk my
liberty, that I might hear my fate from her own lips. I crossed the Alps
withou