Mr. Wilkins knew no Italian, and the expression pericoloso left him precisely as it found him—­or would have if he had seen it, but naturally he took no notice of the printed matter on the wall.  He firmly closed the door on the servants, resisting Domenico, who tried to the last to press through, and locked himself in as a man should for his bath, judicially considering, as he made his simple preparations for getting in, the singular standard of behaviour of these foreigners who, both male and female, apparently wished to stay with him while he bathed.  In Finland, he had heard, the female natives not only were present on such occasions but actually washed the bath-taking traveler.  He had not heard, however, that this was true too of Italy, which somehow seemed much nearer civilization—­perhaps because one went there, and did not go to Finland.

Impartially examining this reflection, and carefully balancing the claims to civilization of Italy and Finland, Mr. Wilkins got into the bath and turned off the tap.  Naturally he turned off the tap.  It was what one did.  But on the instructions, printed in red letters, was a paragraph saying that the tap should not be turned off as long as there was still fire in the stove.  It should be left on—­not much on, but on—­until the fire was quite out; otherwise, and here again was the word pericoloso, the stove would blow up.

Mr. Wilkins got into the bath, turned off the tap, and the stove blew up, exactly as the printed instructions said it would.  It blew up, fortunately, only in its inside, but it blew up with a terrific noise, and Mr. Wilkins leapt out of the bath and rushed to the door, and only the instinct born of years of training made him snatch up a towel as he rushed.

Scrap, half-way across the landing on her way out of doors, heard the explosion.

“Good heavens,” she thought, remembering the instruction, “there goes Mr. Wilkins!”

And she ran toward the head of the stairs to call the servants, and as she ran, out ran Mr. Wilkins clutching his towel, and they ran into each other.

“That damned bath!” cried Mr. Wilkins, imperfectly concealed in his towel, his shoulders exposed at one end and his legs at the other, and Lady Caroline Dester, to meet whom he had swallowed all his anger with his wife and come out to Italy.

For Lotty in her letter had told him who was at San Salvatore besides herself and Mrs. Arbuthnot, and Mr. Wilkins at once had perceived that this was an opportunity which might never recur.  Lotty had merely said, “There are two other women here, Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline Dester,” but that was enough.  He knew all about the Droitwiches, their wealth, their connections, their place in history, and the power they had, should they choose to exert it, of making yet another solicitor happy by adding him to those they already employed.  Some people employed one solicitor for one branch of their affairs,