’I know she is, and I do love her so dearly.  But, without joke, Mr Glascock, there will be as it were a great gulf between us.’

’I do not know that there need be any gulf, great or little.  But I did not mean to allude to that.  What I want to say is this.  My feelings are not a bit less warm or sincere than hers.  You know of old that I am not very good at expressing myself.’

‘I know nothing of the kind.’

’There is no such gulf as what you speak of.  All that is mostly gone by, and a nobleman in England, though he has advantages as a gentleman, is no more than a gentleman.  But that has nothing to do with what I am saying now.  I shall never forget my journey to Devonshire.  I won’t pretend to say now that I regret its result.’

‘I am quite sure you don’t.’

’No; I do not, though I thought then that I should regret it always.  But remember this, Miss Rowley that you can never ask me to do anything that I will not, if possible, do for you.  You are in some little difficulty now—­’

‘It will disappear, Mr Glascock.  Difficulties always do.’

’But we will do anything that we are wanted to do; and should a certain event take place—­’

‘It will take place some day.’

’Then I hope that we may be able to make Mr Stanbury and his wife quite at home at Monkhams.’  After that he took Nora’s hand and kissed it, and at that moment Caroline came back to them.

‘Tomorrow, Mr Glascock,’ she said, ’you will, I believe, be at liberty to kiss everybody; but today you should be more discreet.’

It was generally admitted among the various legations in Florence that there had not been such a wedding in the City of Flowers since it had become the capital of Italia.  Mr Glascock and Miss Spalding were married in the chapel of the legation, a legation chapel on the ground floor having been extemporised for the occasion.  This greatly enhanced the pleasantness of the thing, and saved the necessity of matrons and bridesmaids packing themselves and their finery into close fusty carriages.  A portion of the guests attended in the chapel, and the remainder, when the ceremony was over, were found strolling about the shady garden.  The whole affair of the breakfast was very splendid and lasted some hours.  In the midst of this the bride and bridegroom were whisked away with a pair of grey horses to the railway station, and before the last toast of the day had been proposed by the Belgian Councillor of Legation, they were half way up the Apennines on their road to Bologna.  Mr Spalding behaved himself like a man on the occasion.  Nothing was spared in the way of expense, and when he made that celebrated speech, in which he declared that the republican virtue of the New World had linked itself in a happy alliance with the aristocratic splendour of the Old, and went on with a simile about the lion and the lamb, everybody accepted it with good humour in spite of its being a little too long for the occasion.