"Heaven forbid! I have taken great care to avoid recalling myself to his memory. I have no desire to renew my acquaintance with him. I--I--hate the sight of him!" To an uninterested bystander there would have been something ludicrous in the boyish virulence of the expression of hatred coming from so composed and mature a man's mouth as Jim's. But neither of the two persons who now hear it is in a position of mind to see anything ridiculous in it. "Then how do you know that it is true?" "He told an--an acquaintance of mine; he was complaining of the discomfort of his hotel, and, on her recommending him to change it, he answered that it was not worth while, as he was leaving Florence to-morrow." Again from the chair beside him comes that long low sigh. This time there can be no question as to its quality. It is as of a spirit lifting itself from under a leaden load. For a few moments no other sound breaks the stillness. Then Mrs. Le Marchant speaks again in a constrained voice: "We are extremely obliged to you for having taken so much trouble for us, and it must seem very strange to you that we should be so anxious to hear that this--this person has left Florence; but in so small a place one is sure to be always coming into collision with those whom one would rather avoid, and there are reasons which--which make it very--painful to us to meet him." So saying, she tums away precipitately, and leaves the room hastily, by another door from that by which they both entered, and which evidently communicates with an adjoining bedroom. Elizabeth remains lying back in her chair, looking as white as the tablecloth. She is always white, but usually it is a creamy white, like meadow-sweet. Out of her eyes, however, has gone the distressed look of fear, and in them is dawning instead a little friendly smile. "You must have thought us rather impostors when you saw us at the Accademia this morning, after leaving us apparently so shattered overnight," she says, with a somewhat deprecating air. "I was very glad to find you so perfectly recovered," he replies, but he does not say it naturally. When a person, habitually truthful, slides into a speech not completely true, he does it in a bungling journeyman fashion; nor is Burgoyne any exception to this rule. "I think we are a little like india-rubber balls, mammy and I," continues Elizabeth; "we have great recovering powers; if we had not" (stopped for a second by a small patient sigh) "I suppose that we should not be alive now." He does not interrupt her. She must be a much less finely-strung instrument than he takes her for if she does not divine the sympathy of his silence, and sympathy so much in the dark as to what it sympathizes with as his, must needs walk gropingly, if it would escape gins and pitfalls.