By this time a change had taken place in the consular office. Mr. Ferris, some months before, had suddenly thrown up his charge and gone home; and after the customary interval of ship-chandler, the California sculptor, Hoskins, had arrived out, with his commission in his pocket, and had set up his allegorical figure of The Pacific Slope in the room where Ferris had painted his too metaphysical conception of A Venetian Priest. Mrs. Elmore had never liked Ferris; she thought him cynical and opinionated, and she believed that he had not behaved quite well towards a young American lady,--a Miss Vervain, who had stayed awhile in Venice with her mother. She was glad to have him go; but she could not admire Mr. Hoskins, who, however good-hearted, was too hopelessly Western. He had had part of one foot shot away in the nine months' service, and walked with a limp that did him honor; and he knew as much of a consul's business as any of the authors or artists with whom it is the tradition to fill that office at Venice. Besides he was at least a fellow-American, and Elmore could not forbear telling him the trouble he was in: a young girl coming from their town in America as far as Genoa with friends, and expecting to be met there by the Elmores, with whom she was to pass some months; Mrs. Elmore utterly prostrated by one of her old attacks, and he unable to leave her, or to take her with him to Genoa; the friends with whom Miss Mayhew travelled unable to bring her to Venice; she, of course, unable to come alone. The case deepened and darkened in Elmore's view as he unfolded it. "Why," cried the consul sympathetically, "if I could leave my post I'd go!" "Oh, thank you!" cried Elmore eagerly, remembering his wife. "I couldn't think of letting you." "Look here!" said the consul, taking an official letter, with the seal broken, from his pocket. "This is the first time I couldn't have left my post without distinct advantage to the public interests, since I've been here. But with this letter from Turin, telling me to be on the lookout for the Alabama, I couldn't go to Genoa even to meet a young lady. The Austrians have never recognized the rebels as belligerents: if she enters the port of Venice, all I've got to do is to require the deposit of her papers with me, and then I should like to see her get out again. I _should_ like to capture her. Of course, I don't mean Miss Mayhew," said the consul, recognizing the double sense in which his language could be taken. "It would be a great thing for you," said Elmore,--"a _great_ thing." "Yes, it would set me up in my own eyes, and stop that infernal clatter inside about going over and taking a hand again." "Yes," Elmore assented, with a twinge of the old shame. "I didn't know you had it too." "If I could capture the Alabama, I could afford to let the other fellows fight it out." "I congratulate you, with all my heart," said Elmore sadly, and he walked in silence beside the consul.