BOOK TWELFTH.


INITIAL CHAPTER.

WHEREIN THE CAXTON FAMILY REAPPEAR.

"Again," quoth my father,--"again behold us! We who greeted the
commencement of your narrative, who absented ourselves in the midcourse
when we could but obstruct the current of events, and jostle personages
more important,--we now gather round the close. Still, as the chorus to
the drama, we circle round the altar with the solemn but dubious chant
which prepares the audience for the completion of the appointed
destinies; though still, ourselves, unaware how the skein is to be
unravelled, and where the shears are to descend."

So there they stood, the Family of Caxton,--all grouping round me, all
eager officiously to question, some over-anxious prematurely to
criticise.

"Violante can't have voluntarily gone off with that horrid count," said
my mother; "but perhaps she was deceived, like Eugenia by Mr. Bellamy, in
the novel of 'CAMILLA'."

"Ha!" said my father, "and in that case it is time yet to steal a hint
from Clarissa Harlowe, and make Violante die less of a broken heart than
a sullied honour. She is one of those girls who ought to be killed! All
things about her forebode an early tomb!"

"Dear, dear!" cried Mrs. Caxton, "I hope not!"