What a child-like eagerness to please! Yet he had been five years in the
cavalry; he was admirably educated; he wrote a better hand than Manisty's
own, and when his engagement at the villa came to an end he was already,
thanks to a very fair scientific knowledge, engaged as manager in a
firework factory in Rome.

Lucy's look pursued the short flying figure of the butler with a smiling
kindness. What was wrong with this clever and loveable people that Mr.
Manisty should never have a good word for their institutions, or their
history, or their public men? Unjust! Nor was he even consistent with his
own creed. He, so moody and silent with Mrs. Burgoyne and Miss Manisty,
could always find a smile and a phrase for the natives. The servants adored
him, and all the long street of Marinata welcomed him with friendly eyes.
His Italian was fluency itself; and his handsome looks perhaps, his keen
commanding air gave him a natural kingship among a susceptible race.

But to laugh and live with a people, merely that you might gibbet it before
Europe, that you might show it as the Helot among nations--there was a kind
of treachery in it! Lucy Foster remembered some of the talk and feeling in
America after the Manistys' visit there had borne fruit in certain hostile
lectures and addresses on the English side of the water. She had shared the
feeling. She was angry still. And her young ignorance and sympathy were up
in arms so far on behalf of Italy. Who and what was this critic that he
should blame so freely, praise so little?

Not that Mr. Manisty had so far confided any of his views to her! It seemed
to her that she had hardly spoken with him since that first evening of her
arrival. But she had heard further portions of his book read aloud; taken
from the main fabric this time and not from the embroideries. The whole
villa indeed was occupied, and pre-occupied by the book. Mrs. Burgoyne was