"Cannot come! Why cannot he come?" "Because he has gone to meet his mammy," replies Jim, trying to speak in a light and playful voice; "she is to arrive unexpectedly in Florence to-day; no good boy would leave his mammy when she had come all the way from England to see him, would he?" But to this fustian and copy-book generality the young gentleman addressed is too angry to reply. "It is a great disappointment to Byng; he bid me tell you what a great disappointment it is to him!" says Jim, turning to the two ladies, and looking apologetically from one to the other. Elizabeth's head is averted; but on her mother's features he sees, or fancies he sees, slight evidences of a feeling not unlike relief. "It is not of the least consequence," she says cheerfully; "we can go any other day just as well." Burgoyne's heart sinks. In these last sentences he too surely traces signs of the evasive and would-be-retrograde nature which has all along characterized Mrs. Le Marchant's relations with him. It has seemed to him that he has been looking forward to the expedition with sensations of almost unmixed dread, and yet, now that he seems to be going to be delivered from it, what he experiences certainly does not come under the head of elation. "You wish to give up the excursion?" he asks, in a tone which he honestly tries to make as neutral and colourless as he can. "Well, I thought so--we thought so, did not we, Elizabeth?" The person thus addressed lifts her head, and all over her features he, eagerly scanning them, sees written a warm acquiescence in her motherly decision, an acquiescence which, as her eyes meet his--his, in which his disappointment is written a good deal more plainly than he is aware--changes slowly and sweetly into indecision. "I do not know," she answers, her gentle look clouded a little, and yet kindly interrogating his; "if Mr. Burgoyne is willing to burden himself with us; and Bertie must play at being a grown-up gentleman, and help to take care of us! Bertie, will you play at being a grown-up gentleman?" To this proposition Bertie assents warmly, and begins thrasonically to recount to inattentive ears the high and singular deeds with which he will celebrate his arrival at maturity. But, as Mrs. Le Marchant puts a strenuous veto upon his adoption as escort, and as his nurse appears at the same juncture to fetch him, he and his dog are presently removed; and the other three set off without him.