at I had heard
about his behavior to Miss Elmslie, in spite of the suspicions which
the history of his family and his own conduct had arrayed against him, I
began to like "Mad Monkton" as much as he liked me. We took many a quiet
ride together in the country, and sailed often along the shores of the
Bay on either side. But for two eccentricities in his conduct, which I
could not at all understand, I should soon have felt as much at my ease
in his society as if he had been my own brother.

The first of these eccentricities consisted in the reappearance on
several occasions of the odd expression in his eyes which I had first
seen when he asked me whether I knew anything about the duel. No matter
what we were talking about, or where we happened to be, there were times
when he would suddenly look away from my face, now on one side of me,
now on the other, but always where there was nothing to see, and always
with the same intensity and fierceness in his eyes. This looked so like
madness--or hypochondria at the least--that I felt afraid to ask him
about it, and always pretended not to observe him.

The second peculiarity in his conduct was that he never referred, while
in my company, to the reports about his errand at Naples, and never once
spoke of Miss Elmslie, or of his life at Wincot Abbey. This not only
astonished me, but amazed those who had noticed our intimacy, and who
had made sure that I must be the depositary of all his secrets. But the
time was near at hand when this mystery, and some other mysteries of
which I had no suspicion at that period, were all to be revealed.

I met him one night at a large ball, given by a Russian nobleman, whose
name I could not pronounce then, and cannot remember now. I had wandered
away from reception-room, ballroom, and cardroom, to a small apartment
at one extremity of the palace, which was half conservatory, half
boudoir, and which had been prettily illuminated for the occasion with
Chinese lanterns. Nobody was in the room when I got there. The view over
the Mediterranean, bathed in the bright softness of Italian moonlight,
was so lovely that I remained for a long time at the window, looking
out, and listening to the dance-music which faintly reached me from the
ballroom. My thoughts were far away with the relations I had left in
England, when I was startled out of them by hearing my name softly
pronounced.

I looked round directly, and saw Monkton standing in the room. A livid