once or twice in his life. Of all the 'Mad Monktons,' as they
used to call them in England, Alfred is the maddest. He is actually our
principal excitement in this dull opera season; though, for my own part,
when I think of the poor girl in England, I am a great deal more ready
to despise him than to laugh at him."

"You know the Elmslies then?"

"Intimately. The other day my mother wrote to me from England, after
having seen Ada. This escapade of Monkton's has outraged all her
friends. They have been entreating her to break off the match, which it
seems she could do if she liked. Even her mother, sordid and selfish as
she is, has been obliged at last, in common decency, to side with the
rest of the family; but the good, faithful girl won't give Monkton up.
She humors his insanity; declares he gave her a good reason in secret
for going away; says she could always make him happy when they were
together in the old Abbey, and can make him still happier when they are
married; in short, she loves him dearly, and will therefore believe in
him to the last. Nothing shakes her. She has made up her mind to throw
away her life on him, and she will do it."

"I hope not. Mad as his conduct looks to us, he may have some sensible
reason for it that we cannot imagine. Does his mind seem at all
disordered when he talks on ordinary topics?"

"Not in the least. When you can get him to say anything, which is not
often, he talks like a sensible, well-educated man. Keep silence about
his precious errand here, and you would fancy him the gentlest and most
temperate of human beings; but touch the subject of his vagabond of an
uncle, and the Monkton madness comes out directly. The other night
a lady asked him, jestingly of course, whether he had ever seen his
uncle's ghost. He scowled at her like a perfect fiend, and said that he
and his uncle would answer her question together some day, if they came
from hell to do it. We laughed at his words, but the lady fainted at his
looks, and we had a scene of hysterics and hartshorn in consequence. Any
other man would have been kicked out of the room for nearly frightening
a pretty woman to death in that way; but 'Mad Monkton,' as we have
christened him, is a privileged lunatic in Neapolitan society, because
he is English, good-looking, and worth thirty thousand a year. He goes
out everywhere under the impression that he may meet with somebody who
has been let into the secret of the place where the my