She had fallen, she said, in ascending a ruin, and had fatally
injured the sinews of her knee; so fatally that when she stood, she
lost eight inches of her accustomed height; so fatally that when she
essayed to move, she could only drag herself painfully along, with
protruded hip and extended foot, in a manner less graceful than
that of a hunchback. She had consequently made up her mind, once
and forever, that she would never stand and never attempt to move
herself.

Stories were not slow to follow her, averring that she had been
cruelly ill-used by Neroni, and that to his violence had she owed her
accident. Be that as it may, little had been said about her husband,
but that little had made it clearly intelligible to the family that
Signor Neroni was to be seen and heard of no more. There was no
question as to readmitting the poor, ill-used beauty to her old
family rights, no question as to adopting her infant daughter beneath
the Stanhope roof-tree. Though heartless, the Stanhopes were not
selfish. The two were taken in, petted, made much of, for a time all
but adored, and then felt by the two parents to be great nuisances
in the house. But in the house the lady was, and there she remained,
having her own way, though that way was not very conformable with the
customary usages of an English clergyman.

Madame Neroni, though forced to give up all motion in the world,
had no intention whatever of giving up the world itself. The beauty
of her face was uninjured, and that beauty was of a peculiar kind.
Her copious rich brown hair was worn in Grecian bandeaux round her
head, displaying as much as possible of her forehead and cheeks. Her
forehead, though rather low, was very beautiful from its perfect