he was an
especial favourite with the Duke, who was strongly attached to him. It
is not necessary to print his name. He has gone to his account. But it
might nevertheless happen that the printing of my story with his name
in these pages might still give pain to somebody.

There was also that year an extremely handsome and attractive lady, a
widow, at the Baths. I will not give her name either. For though there
was no sort of blame or discredit of any kind attached or attachable
to her from any part of my story, as she is, I believe, still living,
and as the memory of that time cannot but be a painful one to her, it
is as well to suppress it. The lady, as I have said, was handsome and
young, and of course all the young fellows who got a chance flirted
with her--_en tout bien tout honneur_. But the Irish chamberlain
attached himself to her, not with any but perfectly avowable
intentions, but more seriously than the other youngsters, and with an
altogether serious eye to her very comfortable dower.

Now during that same summer there was at the Baths Mr. Plowden, the
banker from Rome. He was then a young man; he has recently died an
old one in the Eternal City. His name I mention in telling my story
because much blame was cast upon him at the time by people in Rome, in
Florence, and at the Baths, who did not know the facts as entirely and
accurately as I knew them; and I am able here to declare publicly what
I have often declared privately, that he behaved well and blamelessly
in the whole matter.

And probably, though I have no distinct recollection that it was so,
Plowden may have also been smitten by the lady. Now, whether the
Irishman imagined that the young banker was his most formidable rival,
or whether there may have been some previous cause of ill-will between
the two men, I cannot say, but so it was that the chamberlain sent
a challenge to the banker. The latter declined to accept it on the
ground that he _was_ a banker and not a fighting man, and that his
business position would have been materially injured by his fighting a
duel. The Irishman might have made the most of this triumph, such as
it was. But he was not content with doing so, and lost none of the
opportunities, which the social habits of such a place daily afforded
him, for insulting and outraging his enemy. And he was continually
boasting to his friends that before the end of the season he would
compel him to come out and be shot at.

And before