Martin Disney sat silent by his wife’s sofa. He could never hear Lord Lostwithiel’s name without a touch of pain. His only objection to Hulbert as a brother-in-law was the thought that the two men were of the same race--that he must needs hear the hated name from time to time; and yet he believed his wife’s avowal that she was pure and true. His hatred of the name came only from the recollection that she had been slandered by a man whom he despised. He looked at the wasted profile on the satin pillow, so wan, so transparent in its waxen pallor, the heavy eyelid drooping languidly, the faintly coloured lips drawn as if with pain--a broken lily. Was this the kind of woman to be suspected of evil--this fair and fragile creature, in whom the spiritual so predominated over the sensual? He hated himself for having been for a moment influenced by that underbred scoundrel at Glenaveril, for having been base enough to doubt his wife’s purity. He had pained and humiliated her, and now the stamp of death was on the face he adored, and before him lay the prospect of a life’s remorse. They left San Remo three days afterwards, Isola being pronounced able to bear the journey, though her cough had been considerably increased by that imprudent slumber in the wood. She was anxious to go; and doctor and husband gave way to her eagerness for new scenes. “I am so tired of this place,” she said piteously. “It is lovely; but it is a loveliness that makes me melancholy. I want to be in a great city where there are lots of people moving about. I have never lived in a city, but always in quiet places--beautiful, very beautiful, but so still--so still--so full of one’s self and one’s own thoughts.” CHAPTER XXII. ECCO ROMA. The agent had proved himself worthy of trust, and had chosen the lodging for Colonel Disney’s family with taste and discretion. It was a first floor over a jeweller’s shop in a short street behind the Piazza di Spagna, and under the Pincian Gardens. There were not too many stairs for Isola to ascend when she came in from her drive or walk. The gardens were close at hand, and all around there were trees and flowers, and an atmosphere of verdure and retirement in the midst of the great cosmopolitan city. It was dark when the train came into the terminus; and Isola was weary and exhausted after the long hot journey from Pisa, the glare of the sun, and the suffocating clouds of dust, and the beautiful monotony of blue sea and sandy plains, long level wastes, where nothing grew but brushwood and osier, and stretches of marshy ground, with water pools shining here and there, like burnished steel, and distant islets dimly seen athwart a cloud of heat. Then evening closed in, and it was through a grey and formless world that they approached the city whose very name thrilled her.