"Why should this young man have so sounded me as to Violante's chance of
losing fortune if she married, an Englishman?"

"Did he? Oh, pooh! Excuse him. It was but his natural wish to seem
ignorant of all about me. He did not know enough of my intimacy with you
to betray my secret."

But he knew enough of it--must have known enough--to have made it right
that he should tell you I was in England. He does not seem to have done
so."

"No; that is strange--yet scarcely strange; for, when we last met, his
head was full of other things,--love and marriage. /Basta!/ youth will be
youth."

"He has no youth left in him!" exclaimed Harley, passionately. "I doubt
if he ever had any. He is one of those men who come into the world with
the pulse of a centenarian. You and I never shall be as old as he was in
long clothes. Ah, you may laugh; but I am never wrong in my instincts.
I disliked him at the first,--his eye, his smile, his voice, his very
footstep. It is madness in you to countenance such a marriage; it may
destroy all chance of your restoration."

"Better that than infringe my word once passed."

"No, no," exclaimed Harley; "your word is not passed, it shall not be
passed. Nay, never look so piteously at me. At all events, pause till
we know more of this young man. If he be worthy of her without a dower,
why, then, let him lose you your heritage. I should have no more to
say."