A sudden instinct, with which his will has nothing to do, makes him flash a look back at Mrs. Le Marchant, as if to gauge the effect produced upon her by his betrothed; and, following her glance, he finds that it is resting on Cecilia. She thinks that he is engaged to Cecilia. The mistake is intolerable to him, and yet a second's reflection tells him that it is a natural one. In a second he sees his Amelia as she presents herself to a strange eye. Miss Wilson is only thirty-one, but upon her has already come that set solid look of middle age, which overtakes some women before they are well over the borders of youth, and which other women manage to stave off till they are within near hail of forty. Yes; the mistake is quite a natural one. Most people would suppose that the showy Cecilia, still fairly youthful, and with so many obvious and well-produced "points," must be his choice; and yet, as I have said, the idea that anyone should credit him with her ownership is intolerable to him. "Here she is!" he cries precipitately. "The one to the right side, the other is her sister; may I--may I present them to you?" Perhaps it is his irritated fancy that dictates the idea, but it seems to him as if he detected a sort of surprise in Mrs. Le Marchant's face, when he effects the introduction he has proposed, and to which she accedes courteously, after a pause of hesitation about as long as had followed his inquiry of Elizabeth as to their address. Five minutes later they have all sauntered out again on the terrace, and Burgoyne is again leaning on the wall; but this time he has no fear of hearing of Bayswater, for it is Elizabeth who is beside him. Since last he looked at it half an hour ago, a sort of glorification has passed over the divine view. Down where the river twists through the plain country, there is a light, dainty mist, but the mountains have put on their fullest glory. They are not green, or brown, or purple, or blue; but clad in that ineffable raiment woven by the sun, that defies our weak vocabulary to provide it with a name. A little snow-chain lies on the sun-warmed neck of Morello, and along the tops of the further Apennines, right against the acute blue of the heavens, lies a line of snow, that looks like a fleece-soft cloud resting from its journeyings on their crests; but it is no cloud, nor is there any speck upon the gigantic complete arch that over-vaults town and valley and radiant mountains. In the folds of these last, the shadows slumber; but over all the city is the great gold glory of spring. The one thing in Florence that frowns among so many smiles is the scowling Pitti, and that, from here, is invisible. Nearer to him, against the azure, stand the solemn flame-shaped cypresses arow, and beside them--as unlike as life to death--a band of quivering poplars, a sort of transparent gold-green in their young spring livery. The air is so clear that one can go nigh to counting the marbles on the Duomo walls.