"Is that a piece of scandal of your own invention, or is it founded on fact?" asks Burgoyne, rousing himself, and looking over his shoulder towards the entrance to the next frescoed, mirrored, pictured room, whence he hears the sound of approaching voices. In his eye is an idle and mechanical curiosity, mixed with vexation that his short respite from his fellow-countrymen is ended; in this case, it is fellow-countrywomen, for the tones that are nearing are those of a woman, a woman who is saying in a key of satisfaction, "Oh, here it is! I thought I remembered that it was in this room." At the same moment the speaker, as well as the person addressed, came into sight; and in an instant out of Burgoyne's eye has raced away the lack-lustre curiosity, and has given way to an expression of something beyond surprise, of something more nearly verging on consternation; and yet, after all, there is nothing very astonishing in the fact that it is Mrs. Le Marchant who is the woman in search of the Vandyke. There is nothing more surprising in her being at Genoa than in his being there himself. At that mart of nations it can never be matter for wonder to meet anyone; but who is this to whom her observation is addressed? It is not Mr. Le Marchant, it is not a man at all; it is a slight woman-- "White as a lily, and small as a wand"-- like Lance's sister, dressed with that neat, tight, gray-tinted simplicity, severe yet smart, which marks the well-bred Englishwoman on her travels. Is it one of the younger ones, who has grown up so startlingly like her? Miriam? Rose? or is it, can it be, the dead Elizabeth? CHAPTER IV. In a ripe civilization such as ours there are formulas provided to meet the requirements of every exigency that may possibly arise; but amongst them there is not one which teaches us how to greet a person come back from the dead, because it is held impossible that such a contingency can occur. Perhaps this is the reason why Jim Burgoyne, usually a docile and obedient member of the society to which he belongs, now flies in the face of all the precepts instilled into him by that society's code. At the sight of Elizabeth Le Marchant entering the room, clad in a very neat tailor gown, instead of the winding-sheet with which he had credited her, he at first stands transfixed, staring at her with a hardness of intensity which is allowed to us in the case of Titian's "Bella," or Botticelli's "Spring," but has never been accounted permissible in the case of a more living loveliness. Then, before he can control, or even question the impulse that drives him, it has carried him to her. "Elizabeth!" he says, in that sort of awed semi-whisper with which one would salute a being plainly returned from the other side, fearing that the fulness of a living voice might strike too strongly on his disused ear--"is it really Elizabeth?"