It is in vain that Cecilia protests that she has already seen quite as much of the wistaria as she wishes; that she had never denied the potency of its perfume; that her legs are giving way beneath her from fatigue. Jim marches her relentlessly away, nor does he again quit her side until he sees her safely seated in the fiacre which is to carry her home. It is indeed his portion to have a _tête-à-tête_ drive back to Florence with her, Byng having absently stepped into the vehicle which bears the other ladies. He draws a long breath as they jog slowly away from the villa, leaving the clergyman taking off his tall hat, with a baffled and offended air of farewell. He is conscious that Cecilia is swelling beside him with feelings no less wounded, even for some moments before she speaks. "You rather cut your own throat," she says, in an affronted voice, "when you interrupted me and Mr. Burton so rudely; he was on the point of telling me something very interesting about your dear friends the Le Marchants; he knows all about them; he has known Elizabeth ever since she was a child." Even across Jim's alarm and anxiety there comes a flash of indignation and distaste at the familiar employment of the name that even to himself he only pronounces on his heart's knees. "Who is Elizabeth? Do you mean Miss Le Marchant?" "Mr. Burton talked of her as 'Elizabeth,'" replies Cecilia, with a still more offended accent at the rebuke implied in his words; "one naturally would of a person whom one had known in short frocks." "And he--he told you something very interesting about her?" "No, he did not," returns Cecilia snappishly, "he had not the chance; he was just beginning when you rushed in like a bull in a china shop, and now"--in a key of excessive vexation--"I shall probably never have another chance of hearing, as he leaves Florence to-morrow." Jim's heart gives a bound. "Leaves Florence to-morrow, does he?" he repeats eagerly. "I do not know why you should seem so delighted to hear it," rejoins Cecilia, looking at him from under her smart hat with a mixture of surprise and resentment. "I do not see anything particularly exhilarating in losing an agreeable acquaintance almost as soon as one has made it!" "Perhaps--perhaps it was a false alarm," says Jim, set, to some extent, on his guard by her evident astonishment at the keenness of his interest in the subject; "perhaps"--beginning to laugh--"he only said it to frighten you; why do you think that he is leaving Florence to-morrow?" "Because he told me so," answers she impatiently; "he is at the Grande Bretagne, and he was complaining of not being comfortable there, and I was advising him to move to another hotel, and he said, 'Oh no, it was not worth while, as he was leaving Florence to-morrow.'"