However, in a brief visit to London, she so much pleased Mr.
Grinstead that he invited her to partake in the winter's journey to
Italy. Poor man, he little knew what he undertook. Music, art,
Roman Catholic services, and novelty conspired to intoxicate her, and
her sister was thankful to carry her off northward before she had
pledged herself to enter a convent.

Mountain air and scenery, however, proved equally dangerous. Her
enterprises inspired the two quiet people with constant fears for her
neck; but it was worse when they fell in with a party of very
Bohemian artists, whom Mr. Grinstead knew just well enough not to be
able to shake them off. The climax came when she started off with
them in costume at daybreak on an expedition to play the zither and
sing at a village fete. She came back safe and sound, but Geraldine
was already packed up to take her to Munich, where Charles Audley and
Stella now were, and to leave her under their charge before she had
driven Mr. Grinstead distracted.

There was a worse trouble at home. Since the death of his good old
mother and of Felix Underwood, Sir Adrian Vanderkist had been rapidly
going downhill; as though he had thrown off all restraint, and as if
the yearly birth of a daughter left him the more free to waste his
patrimony. Little or nothing had been heard direct from poor Alda
till Clement was summoned by a telegram from Ironbeam Park to find
his sister in the utmost danger, with a new-born son by her side, and
her husband in the paroxysms of the terrible Nemesis of indulgence in
alcohol.

Sir Adrian had quarrelled with all the family in turn except Clement,
and this fact, or else that gentleness towards a sufferer that had