She would have been wounded if her old friend Jim had not come to see the last of her, and she would have been broken-hearted if her son had not paid her this final attention; and yet each necessarily destroys the _tête-à-tête_ she is burning to have with the other. It is indelicate to implore your adored child not to go to the devil in the presence of an intimate friend, and it would give a not unnatural umbrage to that child if you urged the guardian friend to check his downward tendency while he himself is standing by. Nor do her two companions at all aid her in her strategy; rather, they show a tendency to unite in baffling her, hanging together round her like a bodyguard, and effectually hindering the last words which she is pining to administer. Only once for a very few minutes does she succeed in outwitting them, when she despatches Willy to the bookstall to buy papers for her--an errand from which he returns with an exasperating celerity. The instant that his back is turned, Mrs. Byng addresses her companion in an eager voice of hurry and prayer: "You will keep an eye upon him?" Silence. "You will keep an eye upon him--promise?" "I do not know what 'keeping an eye upon him' means in your vocabulary; often you and I do not use the same dictionary; until I know, I will not promise." "You will look after him; _do_, Jim!" "My dear madam"--with irritation--"let me go and buy your papers; and meanwhile urge _him_ to look after _me_; I assure you that it is quite as necessary." "Fiddlesticks, with your unimaginative, unemotional nature----" "H'm!" "Your head will always take care of your heart." "Will it?" "While he--promise me at least that, if you see him rushing to his ruin, you will telegraph to me?" "Certainly, if you wish it; I will telegraph, 'Willy rushing Ruin.' At five-and-twenty centimes a word, it will cost you sevenpence halfpenny; not dear at the price, is it?" The mother reddens. "You have become a very _mauvais plaisant_ of late, Jim; oh dear me! here he is back again, tiresome boy!" It is with feelings tied into a knot of complications, which he scarcely seeks to unravel, that Burgoyne walks away from the station, and from the good-natured staunch woman, whose last few moments in fair Firenze he has done his best to embitter. He is glad that she is gone, and he is sorry that she is gone. He is remorseful at his gladness, and he is ashamed of his sorrow, knowing and acknowledging that it results from no regret for her companionship, which he had been wont to prize; but to the consciousness that she had stood like an angel with a drawn sword between her son and the Piazza d'Azeglio. Both angel and drawn sword are steaming away now, covered by a handsome travelling cloak down to the heels in a _coupé toilette_, and the road to the Piazza lies naked and undefended, open to the light feet that are so buoyantly treading the flags beside him.