ies being addressed to this gentleman (a
physician of undoubted capacity and respectability), it turned out that
he also had never seen Ferrari, having been summoned to the palace (as
his memorandum book showed) at a date subsequent to the courier's
disappearance. The doctor described Lord Montbarry's malady as
bronchitis. So far, there was no reason to feel any anxiety, though
the attack was a sharp one. If alarming symptoms should appear, he had
arranged with her ladyship to call in another physician. For the rest,
it was impossible to speak too highly of my lady; night and day, she
was at her lord's bedside.

With these particulars began and ended the discoveries made by
Ferrari's courier-friend. The police were on the look-out for the lost
man--and that was the only hope which could be held forth for the
present, to Ferrari's wife.

'What do you think of it, Miss?' the poor woman asked eagerly. 'What
would you advise me to do?'

Agnes was at a loss how to answer her; it was an effort even to listen
to what Emily was saying. The references in the courier's letter to
Montbarry--the report of his illness, the melancholy picture of his
secluded life--had reopened the old wound. She was not even thinking
of the lost Ferrari; her mind was at Venice, by the sick man's bedside.

'I hardly know what to say,' she answered. 'I have had no experience
in serious matters of this kind.'

'Do you think it would help you, Miss, if you read my husband's letters
to me? There are only three of them--they won't take long to read.'

Agnes compassionately read the letters.

They were not written in a very tender tone. 'Dear Emily,' and 'Yours
affectionately'--these conventional phrases, were the only phrases of
endearment which they contained. In the first letter, Lord Montbarry
was not very favourably spoken of:--'We leave Paris to-morrow. I don't
much like my lord. He is proud and cold, and, between ourselves,
stingy in money matters. I have had to dispute such trifles as a few
centimes in the hotel bill; and twice already, some sharp remarks have
passed between the newly-married couple, in consequence of her
ladyship's freedom in purchasing pretty tempting things at the shops in
Paris. "I can't afford it; you must keep to your allowance." She has
had to hear those words already. For my part, I like her. She has the
nice, easy foreign manners--she talks to me as if I was a human being
like herself.'

The second letter was date