you. I could not mistake him," said Holmes. "What
has occurred between you?"

"I will tell you all when I get home," said she, still speaking faintly.
And now they moved through the motley crowd, with sounds of mirth and
words of folly making din around them. Strange discrepant accents to
fall on hearts as full as theirs! "How glad I am to breathe this fresh
cold night air," cried she, as they gained the street. "It was the heat,
the noise, and the confusion overcame me, but I am better now."

"And how have you parted with him?" asked her father, eagerly.

"With a promise that sounds like a threat," said she, in a hollow voice.
"But you shall hear all."

CHAPTER XXXVI. MR. STOCMAR'S VISIT

It was not without trepidation that Mr. Stocmar presented himself,
the morning after the events we have recorded, at the residence of Sir
William Heathcote. His situation was, indeed, embarrassing; for not
only had he broken faith with Mrs. Morris in permitting Paten to take
his place at the ball, but as Paten had started for England that same
night without even communicating with him, Stocmar was completely
puzzled what to do, and how to comport himself.

That she would receive him haughtily, disdainfully even, he was fully
prepared for; that she would reproach him--not very measuredly
too--for his perfidy regarding Paten, he also expected. But even these
difficulties were less than the embarrassment of not knowing how her
meeting with Paten had been conducted, and to what results it had led.
More than once did he stop in the street and deliberate with himself
whether he should not turn back, hasten to his hotel, and leave Florence
without meeting her. Nor was he quite able to say why he resisted this
impulse, nor how it was that, in defiance of all his terrors, he found
himself at length at her door.

The drawing-room into which he was shown was large and splendidly
furnished. A conservatory opened from one end, and at the other a large
folding glass door gave upon a spacious terrace, along which a double
line of orange-trees formed an alley of delicious shade. Scarcely had
Stocmar passed the threshold than a very silvery voice accosted him from
without.

"Oh, do come here, dear Mr. Stocmar, and enjoy the delightful freshness
of this terrace. Let me present a very old friend of my family to
you,--Captain Holmes. He has just returned from India, and can give you
the very latest news of the war." And the gentlemen bowe