he had succeeded in building up a reputation for patriotism upon a very slight foundation, and had found persons willing to believe him a sufferer who had escaped martyrdom for the cause, and had deserved the crown of election to a constituency as a just reward of his devotion.  The Romans cared very little what became of him.  The old Blacks confounded Victor Emmanuel with Garibaldi, Cavour with Persiano, and Silvio Pellico with Del Ferice in one sweeping condemnation, desiring nothing so much as never to hear the hated names mentioned in their houses.  The Grey party, being also Roman, disapproved of Ugo on general principles and particularly because he had been a spy, but the Whites, not being Romans at all and entertaining an especial detestation for every distinctly Roman opinion, received him at his own estimation, as society receives most people who live in good houses, give good dinners and observe the proprieties in the matter of visiting-cards.  Those who knew anything definite of the man’s antecedents were mostly persons who had little histories of their own, and they told no tales out of school.  The great personages who had once employed him would have been magnanimous enough to acknowledge him in any case, but were agreeably disappointed when they discovered that he was not amongst the common herd of pension hunters, and claimed no substantial rewards save their politeness and a line in the visiting lists of their wives.  And as he grew in wealth and importance they found that he could be useful still, as bank directors and members of parliament can be, in a thousand ways.  So it came to pass that the Count and Countess Del Ferice became prominent persons in the Roman world.

Ugo was a man of undoubted talent.  By his own individual efforts, though with small scruple as to the means he employed, he had raised himself from obscurity to a very enviable position.  He had only once in his life been carried away by the weakness of a personal enmity, and he had been made to pay heavily for his caprice.  If Donna Tullia had abandoned him when he was driven out of Rome by the influence of the Saracinesca, he might have disappeared altogether from the scene.  But she was an odd compound of rashness and foresight, of belief and unbelief, and she had at that time felt herself bound by an oath she dared not break, besides being attached to him by a hatred of Giovanni Saracinesca almost as great as his own.  She had followed him and had married him without hesitation; but she had kept the undivided possession of her fortune while allowing him a liberal use of her income.  In return, she claimed a certain liberty of action when she chose to avail herself of it.  She would not be bound in the choice of her acquaintances nor criticised in the measure of like or dislike she bestowed upon them.  She was by no means wholly bad, and if she had a harmless fancy now and then, she required her husband to treat her as above suspicion.  On the whole, the arrangement