months, and if it comes to a
funeral for Von Ibn--why, it isn't our funeral, anyway!"

He stood up as he spoke, and smiled and held out his hand to her. She
rose, feeling as if some fearful ultimatum had been proclaimed above her
head.

"It's sort of hard, you know," Jack said, as he assisted her carefully
down the steep steps; "it's _awful_ hard to travel with you and have you
never smile and never say anything, and not be able to explain that you
feel bad because you won't marry a man who wants you and whom you want."

"I married just such a man once upon a time," she replied sadly.

"Yes," said Jack; "but I didn't like that man, and I do like Von Ibn."

She drew a quick breath.

From the cathedral they returned directly to the hotel.

Chapter Sixteen

It was Genoa.

The end of all was at hand.

Rosina recollected the careless, callous manner with which in earlier,
happier days she had spoken of this fated spot.

"Are you going home by the Southern Route?"

"Yes, we sail from Genoa;" or, "Do you leave at Naples?" "Oh, no, it's
Monte Carlo this time, so we shall get off at Genoa."

Genoa!

Once she had thought its blue mountain masses most sublimely beautiful,
now anything with hollows and shadows reminded her of those two
misery-circled eyes, and she was led to wonder afresh if he, or she,
would ever recover.

It is always astonishing how the port from which we sail partakes of our
sailing sentiments. It's a "jolly good place" or a "dull old hole," just
according to who is on the deck or who is on the dock. Handkerchiefs
flutter gayly in the stolid face of Hoboken every day of the year, and
many beside Marie Stuart have wept themselves out of sight of sunny
France. It isn't the place that counts when the anchor goes down or up,
it's the Who and the When; and in view of what has filled all the
foregoing pages I trust that the reader will sympathize with Rosina and
pardon my slang if I state that Genoa appeared to her upon this occasion
very much more rocky than ever before.

Their arrival had not been auspicious, to begin with. The cab on its
narrow way hotel-ward had collided energetically with another cab and
had a wheel taken off. Jack was on the high side, and Rosina was only
too anxious to have anything happen to her; but Ottillie, who had
narrowly escaped being pitched out on her head, was quite perturbed, and
feared that the accident was a bad omen for the voyage.

The following mo