It is five o'clock, the hour fixed for the expedition to Certosa, and in the _entresol_ of 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio, Mrs. and Miss Le Marchant are sitting--hatted, gloved, and _en-tout-cas-ed_--in expectation of the arrival of their double escort. Elizabeth's afternoon has, so far, not been a lazy one, as her little cousin Bertie and his dog have again been good enough to pay her a lengthy visit, and the former has insisted upon a repetition of the musical performance of the other day, though with truncated rites. Without the powerful aid of Byng, Elizabeth has found it a task considerably beyond her strength to hold a large collie, poised on his hind-legs, on a music-stool. He has jumped down repeatedly, and now lies on his back--an attitude in which experience has taught him he is less attackable than in any other--sawing the air with his fore-paws, and lifting his lip in a deprecating grin. "Where is Mr. Byng?" cries Bertie fretfully, baulked in his efforts to make his wily victim resume the perpendicular. "I want Mr. Byng! Why does not Mr. Byng come?" "Perhaps if you went to the window," suggests Mrs. Le Marchant, in that patiently coaxing voice in which we are wont to address a tiresome child on a visit, instead of the buffet which we should bestow upon it were it resident--"perhaps if you went to the window and looked out, you would see him coming round the corner of the Piazza." The suggestion is at once accepted, and the child, balancing his fidgety body on a chair, and craning his neck over the window-ledge, is shouting shrill pieces of information as to the passers-by to his friends within the room. Presently he shrieks out in triumph: "I see him! He is just coming into sight! He is walking so fast! No!"--a moment later, with a changed and disgusted note, as a nearer view corrects the first impression--"it is not he at all! It is only the other one!" "_Only the other one!_" It is quite impossible that the sound of the child's voice can reach down to the open portal of No. 12 bis, at which Jim has now arrived, and it is also certain that neither of the ladies whom he has come to visit is likely to word her surprise at his having arrived alone with the frank brutality which is confined to the utterances of infancy; and yet Jim, as he presents himself, announced by Annunziata, the hard-featured possessor of a lovely name, is quite as conscious, as if he had overheard the boy's slighting remark, of being "only the other one!" Before he can begin his apologies, the eager little boy has run up to him. "Where is Mr. Byng? I want Mr. Byng! Why has not he come? Elizabeth wants Mr. Byng!" At this last clause Burgoyne is conscious of a dark, hot flush rising to his face, and, partly to hide it, partly to avoid seeing what the effect of his communication may be upon her for whom it is meant, he stoops over the child, addressing his answer to him: "Mr. Byng is very sorry, very sorry indeed, but he cannot come."