Jim Burgoyne is not a man whom, as a rule, it is easy either to wile or cudgel into any course that does not recommend itself to his own judgment or taste--a fact of which he himself is perfectly aware, and which makes him remorsefully acknowledge that there must indeed have been a traitor in the citadel of his own heart before he could have so weakly yielded at the first push to what his reason sincerely disapproves. But yet it is not true that remorse is the leading feature of his thoughts, as he walks silently beside his friend down the Via di Servi. It ought to be, perhaps; but it is not. The picture that holds the foreground of his memory is that of Elizabeth sitting on the floor, and sending him peace-offerings from her pathetic eyes and across her sensitive lips. It was very sweet of her to think it necessary to make him amends at all for her trifling incivility, and nothing could be sweeter than the manner of it. How gladly would he buy some little rudeness from her every day at such a price! But yet, as he thinks it over, the manner of it, the ground on which she rested her excuse, is surely a strange one. That she should attribute her light lapse from courtesy to want of knowledge of the world comes strangely from the mouth of a woman of six-and-twenty. If it be true--and there was a naïve veracity in lip and eye as she spoke--how is it to be accounted for? Has her mind, has her experience of life, remained absolutely stationary during the last ten years? Her tell-tale face, over which some pensive story is so plainly written, forbids the inference. It is no business of his, of course. Amelia, thank Heaven! has no story; but, oh! if someone would tell him what that history is! And yet, three days later, he voluntarily puts away from himself the opportunity of hearing it.