time. Their father, Dr. Ewen Hooper, the holder of a recently founded
classical readership, had once possessed a younger sister of
considerable beauty, who, in the course of an independent and
adventurous career, had captured--by no ignoble arts--a widower, who
happened to be also an earl and a rich man. It happened while they were
both wintering at Florence, the girl working at paleography, in the
Ambrosian Library, while Lord Risborough, occupying a villa in the
neighbourhood of the Torre San Gallo, was giving himself to the artistic
researches and the cosmopolitan society which suited his health and his
tastes. He was a dilettante of the old sort, incurably in love with
living, in spite of the loss of his wife, and his only son; in spite
also of an impaired heart--in the physical sense--and various other
drawbacks. He came across the bright girl student, discovered that she
could talk very creditably about manuscripts and illuminations, gave her
leave to work in his own library, where he possessed a few priceless
things, and presently found her company, her soft voice, and her eager,
confiding eyes quite indispensable. His elderly sister, Lady Winifred,
who kept house for him, frowned on the business in vain; and finally
departed in a huff to join another maiden sister, Lady Marcia, in an
English country _ménage_, where for some years she did little but lament
the flesh-pots of Italy--Florence. The married sister, Lady Langmoor,
wrote reams of plaintive remonstrances, which remained unanswered.
Lord Risborough married the girl student, Ella Hooper, and
never regretted it. They had one daughter, to whom they devoted
themselves--preposterously, their friends thought; but for twenty years,
they were three happy people together. Then virulent influenza,
complicated with pneumonia, carried off the mother during a spring visit
to Rome, and six weeks later Lord Risborough died of the damaged heart
which had held out so long.