"Yes, he will be at home," replies Amelia, slowly and doubtfully, as if not finding a very satisfactory solution in this suggested arrangement; "but, as you know, it never answers to leave father and Sybilla alone together for long. You see, he does not believe that there is anything the matter with her; he thinks that she is as well as you or I" (a gush of warm feeling towards his father-in-law rushes over Jim's heart); "and though he tries to prevent himself from showing it to her, yet I am afraid, poor dear, that he is not very successful." Jim laughs. "And to-day," continues Amelia, "he is naturally a good deal upset about Cecilia and that wedding-cake; it _was_ very impertinent to send it--was not it?--though she does not seem to see it. I hope"--with a wistful smile, and a repetition of the fond friction of her head against his sleeve--"that when _you_ throw _me_ over----" This is a hypothesis, suggested with perhaps unwise frequency by poor Miss Wilson, which never fails to exasperate Jim. "If we are going to talk nonsense," he breaks in brusquely, and with no attempt to return or reward her caressing gesture, "I may as well go." "Go to the Piazza d'Azeglio," says she coaxingly, her spirits raised by the harshness of tone of his interruption of her speech, and half persuading herself that it owes its birth to the supposition being too painful to be faced by him. He looks at her strangely for a moment, then--"Why do you wish me to go to the Piazza d'Azeglio?" he asks, in a tone that is no longer overtly cross, only constrained and odd. "Why are you driving me there?" "Because I think you would like it," she answers; "because"--taking his hand and passing her lips, which he feels to be trembling a little, very gently over the back of it--"because all through your life I want you to have exactly what you like, always." He draws his hand away; not unkindly, but as if shocked at the humility of her action. "That is so likely," he says mournfully. CHAPTER X.