intly, "but weak--weary; and I know Upton will
forgive me if I say good-night."

"What a wreck indeed!" exclaimed Upton, as Glencore left the room with
his son. "I'd not have known him."

"And yet until the last half-hour I have not seen him so well for weeks
past. I 'm afraid something you said about Alicia Villars affected him,"
said Harcourt.

"My dear Harcourt, how young you are in all these things," said Upton,
as he lighted his cigarette. "A poor heart-stricken fellow, like
Glencore, no more cares for what _you_ would think a painful allusion,
than an old weather-beaten sailor would for a breezy morning on the
Downs at Brighton. His own sorrows lie too deeply moored to be disturbed
by the light winds that ruffle the surface. And to think that all this
is a woman's doing! Is n't that what's passing in your mind, eh, most
gallant Colonel?"

"By Jove, and so it was! They were the very words I was on the point of
uttering," said Harcourt, half nettled at the ease with which the other
read him.

"And of course you understand the source of the sorrow?"

"I'm not quite so sure of that," said Harcourt, more and more piqued at
the tone of bantering superiority with which the other spoke.

"Yes, you do, Harcourt; I know you better than you know yourself. Your
thoughts were these: Here's a fellow with a title, a good name, good
looks, and a fine fortune, going out of the world of a broken heart, and
all for a woman!"

"You knew her," said Harcourt, anxious to divert the discussion from
himself.

"Intimately. Ninetta della Torre was the belle of Florence--what am I
saying? of all Italy--when Glencore met her, about eighteen years ago.
The Palazzo della Torre was the best house in Florence. The old Prince,
her grandfather,--her father was killed in the Russian campaign,--was
spending the last remnant of an immense fortune in every species of
extravagance. Entertainments that surpassed those of the Pitti Palace in
splendor, fetes that cost fabulous sums, banquets voluptuous as those
of ancient Rome, were things of weekly occurrence. Of course every
foreigner, with any pretension to distinction, sought to be presented
there, and we English happened just at that moment to stand tolerably
high in Italian estimation. I am speaking of some eighteen or twenty
years back, before we sent out that swarm of domestic economists who,
under the somewhat erroneous notion of foreign cheapness, by a system
of incessant higgle and b