altogether the chance of securing a fortune that would realize his most
dazzling dreams, upon the mere assurance, however probable, which had so
dismayed him; and on the other hand, should he be compelled to relinquish
all idea of such alliance, though he did not contemplate the base perfidy
of actually assisting Peschiera's avowed designs, still, if Frank's
marriage with Beatrice should absolutely depend upon her brother's
obtaining the knowledge of Violante's retreat, and that marriage should
be as conducive to his interests as he thought he could make it, why--he
did not then push his deductions further, even to himself,--they seemed
too black; but he sighed heavily, and that sigh foreboded how weak would
be honour and virtue against avarice and ambition. Therefore, on all
accounts, Riccabocca was one of those cards in a sequence, which so
calculating a player would not throw out of his hand: it might serve for
repique, at the worst it might score well in the game. Intimacy with the
Italian was still part and parcel in that knowledge which was the synonym
of power.

While the young man was thus meditating, on his road to Norwood,
Riccabocca and his Jemima were close conferring in their drawing-room.
And if you could have seen them, reader, you would have been seized with
equal surprise and curiosity: for some extraordinary communication had
certainly passed between them. Riccabocca was evidently much agitated,
and with emotions not familiar to him. The tears stood in his eyes at
the same time that a smile, the reverse of cynical or sardonic, curved
his lips; while his wife was leaning her head on his shoulder, her hand
clasped in his, and, by the expression of her face, you might guess that
he had paid her some very gratifying compliment, of a nature more genuine
and sincere than those which characterized his habitual hollow and
dissimulating gallantry. But just at this moment Giacomo entered, and
Jemima, with her native English modesty, withdrew in haste from