At last we started for Rome, our party nearly filling two carriages.  There are only two ways of traveling:  in your own carriage, with courier and fourgon, like Russian or transatlantic noble, or with vetturino.  This last mode, which was ours, is scarcely less pleasant, if you are not in a hurry.  The charm of having, for a certain period, every care as to ways and means off your mind, compensates for the six-miles-an-hour pace.  So we moved slowly southward through Verona, where one thinks more of the Avon than the Adige—­where, in tombs poised like Mohammed’s coffin, the mighty Scagliari sleep between earth and heaven, as if not quite fit for either—­where are the cypresses in the trim old garden, soaring skyward till the eyes that follow grow dizzy, the trees that were green and luxuriant years before the world was redeemed.  So through Mantua and Bologna down to Florence, where, I think, the spirits of Catharine and Cosmo linger yet, the women and the men all so soft-toned, and silky, and sinful, and cruel.  We did not stay long there, for we had all visited it before once or twice, but kept on our way, by the upper road, to Rome, till we reached our last halting-place—­Civita Castellana.

We were gathered round the wood fire after dinner (for the October evenings grew chilly as they closed in); I don’t know how it was that Forrester began telling us about their flight.

“You ought to have seen Bella’s baggage,” he said, at last; “it was so compact.  You can’t fancy any thing so tiny as the sac de nuit.  A courier’s moneybag would make two of it.  Then a vast cloak, and that’s all.  Quite in light marching order.”

“I wonder you are not ashamed to talk about baggage,” his wife retorted.  “When we got to Dover, there was his servant with four immense portmanteaus and a dressing-case nearly as large, waiting for us.  Was it not romantic?”

“Bah!” Charley said.  “A man must have his comforts, even if he is eloping.  I am sure I arranged every thing superbly.  I don’t know how I did it—­an undeveloped talent for intrigue, I suppose.”

“Was it not kind of him to take so much trouble?” Isabel asked, quite innocently, and in perfect good faith, I am sure; but her husband pinched the little pink ear that was within his reach.

“She means to be sarcastic,” he said.  “You’ve spoiled her, Guy.  If I had had time to deliberate, though, I don’t think I should ever have come to the post.  I wonder how any one stands the training.”

“I’ll tell you what would have suited you exactly,” Livingstone remarked—­“to have been one of those men in the Arabian Nights, who wake and find themselves at a strange city’s gate, 10,000 leagues from home, to whom there comes up a venerable vizier, saying, ’My son, heaven has blessed me with one daughter, a very pearl of beauty; many have sought her in marriage, but in vain.  Your appearance pleases me, and I would have you for my son-in-law.’”