‘It has gone off very well, mamma; has it not?’ said Nora, as she returned home with her mother to her lodgings.

‘Yes, my dear; much, I fancy, as these things generally do.’

’I thought it was so nice.  And she looked so very well.  And he was so pleasant, and so much like a gentleman—­not noisy, you know, and yet not too serious.’

‘I dare say, my love.’

’It is easy enough, mamma, for a girl to be married, for she has nothing to do but to wear her clothes and look as pretty as she can.  And if she cries and has a red nose it is forgiven her.  But a man has so difficult a part to play!  If he tries to carry himself as though it were not a special occasion, he looks like a fool that way; and if he is very special, he looks like a fool the other way.  I thought Mr Glascock did it very well.’

‘To tell you the truth, my dear, I did not observe him.’

‘I did narrowly.  He hadn’t tied his cravat at all nicely.’

’How could you think of his cravat, Nora, with such memories as you must have, and such regrets, I cannot understand.’

’Mamma, my memories of Mr Glascock are pleasant memories, and as for regrets, I have not one.  Can I regret, mamma, that I did not marry a man whom I did not love and that I rejected him when I knew that I loved another?  You cannot mean that, mamma.’

’I know this, that I was thinking all the time how proud I should have been, and how much more fortunate he would have been, had you been standing there instead of that American young woman.’  As she said this Lady Rowley burst into tears, and Nora could only answer her mother by embracing her.  They were alone together, their party having been too large for one carriage, and Sir Marmaduke having taken his two younger daughters.  ‘Of course, I feel it,’ said Lady Rowley, through her tears.  ’It would have been such a position for my child!  And that young man without a shilling in the world; and writing in that way, just for bare bread!’ Nora had nothing more to say.  A feeling that in herself would have been base, was simply affectionate and maternal in her mother.  It was impossible that she should make her mother see it as she saw it.

There was but one intervening day and then the Rowleys returned to England.  There had been, as it were, a tacit agreement among them that, in spite of all their troubles, their holiday should be a holiday up to the time of the Glascock marriage.  Then must commence at once the stern necessity of their return home home, not only to England, but to those antipodean islands from which it was too probable that some of them might never come back.  And the difficulties in their way seemed to be almost insuperable.  First of all there was to be the parting from Emily Trevelyan.  She had determined to remain in Florence, and had written to her husband saying that she would do so, and declaring her willingness to go out to him, or to receive him in Florence at any time and