y unhealthy influences in Mr. Westwick's room.'

Introduced to Number Fourteen, the doctor looked round him with a
certain appearance of interest which was noticed by everyone present.
'The last time I was in this room,' he said, 'was on a melancholy
occasion. It was before the palace was changed into an hotel. I was
in professional attendance on an English nobleman who died here.' One
of the persons present inquired the name of the nobleman. Doctor Bruno
answered (without the slightest suspicion that he was speaking before a
brother of the dead man), 'Lord Montbarry.'

Henry quietly left the room, without saying a word to anybody.

He was not, in any sense of the term, a superstitious man. But he
felt, nevertheless, an insurmountable reluctance to remaining in the
hotel. He decided on leaving Venice. To ask for another room would
be, as he could plainly see, an offence in the eyes of the manager. To
remove to another hotel, would be to openly abandon an establishment in
the success of which he had a pecuniary interest. Leaving a note for
Arthur Barville, on his arrival in Venice, in which he merely mentioned
that he had gone to look at the Italian lakes, and that a line
addressed to his hotel at Milan would bring him back again, he took the
afternoon train to Padua--and dined with his usual appetite, and slept
as well as ever that night.

The next day, a gentleman and his wife (perfect strangers to the
Montbarry family), returning to England by way of Venice, arrived at
the hotel and occupied Number Fourteen.

Still mindful of the slur that had been cast on one of his best
bedchambers, the manager took occasion to ask the travellers the next
morning how they liked their room. They left him to judge for himself
how well they were satisfied, by remaining a day longer in Venice than
they had originally planned to do, solely for the purpose of enjoying
the excellent accommodation offered to them by the new hotel. 'We have
met with nothing like it in Italy,' they said; 'you may rely on our
recommending you to all our friends.'

On the day when Number Fourteen was again vacant, an English lady
travelling alone with her maid arrived at the hotel, saw the room, and
at once engaged it.

The lady was Mrs. Norbury. She had left Francis Westwick at Milan,
occupied in negotiating for the appearance at his theatre of the new
dancer at the Scala. Not having heard to the contrary, Mrs. Norbury
supposed that Arthur Barville and