His acceptance of the proposition can hardly be called eager; but of this Byng appears unawares. "When shall it be, then? To-day--this afternoon?" "No-o-o; not to-day, I think. It has been arranged that we are to go to San Miniato--Amelia, her sister, and I." "Three of you?" cries Byng, raising his eyebrows. "Then why not four? Why may not I come too?" There being, in point of fact, no reason why he should not, and Cecilia's morning prayer being still ringing in her future brother-in-law's ears, he gives a dull and lagging assent; so that at about three o'clock the two men present themselves at the door of the Wilsons' apartment at the Anglo-Américain Hotel. That Sybilla is not expecting visitors is evident by the fact that, at the moment of their entrance, she is taking her own temperature--a very favourite relaxation of hers--with a clinical thermometer. She removes the instrument from her mouth without indecent haste, and holds out a languid white hand to Byng. "So you are going off on a long afternoon's pleasuring?" she says, with a pathetic smile. "I am so glad that neither of my sisters is going to stay at home with me. We invalids must guard against growing selfish, though I think that is perhaps more the danger with _malades imaginaires_; we real ones have learnt our lesson of suffering better, I hope." "You do not look so very ill," replies Byng, in his sympathetic voice, letting his eyes rest caressingly on the prostrate figure, which has yet no smallest sign of emaciation about it. "Ah, that is because of my colour," replies Sybilla, with an animation slightly tinged with resentment. "You, too, fall into that common error. My London doctor tells me that there is no such unerring indication of radical delicacy of constitution as a fixed pink colour like mine; the more feverish I am, the deeper it grows. It is very hard"--smiling again sadly--"for one gets no pity!" "Where is Cecilia?" cries Jim brusquely, and fidgeting in his chair. "Why is not she ready?" As he speaks, the young lady in question enters--so obviously arrayed for conquest, in so patently new a hat, and such immaculate pale gloves, that across Burgoyne's mind there flashes, in vexed mirth, the recollection of the immortal caution addressed by Major O'Dowd to his friend and comrade, "Moind your oi, Dob, my boy!" Would he not do well to repeat it to his friend? CHAPTER VIII. They are off now, there being nothing further to retard them, leaving Sybilla _tête-à-tête_ with her thermometer. They are off, sociably packed in one fiacre-- "Four precious souls, and all agog To dash thro' thick and thin."