Lady Felicia, usually so severe a stickler for etiquette, was curiously lax at San Marco, and could see nothing strange or unseemly in these unchaperoned rambles with the Roman financier, who, as she observed to Dr. Wilmot, was so obviously correct in all his ideas, to say nothing of his being almost old enough to be Vera's grandfather. "Say father," said the doctor, smiling. "But you are perfectly right in your appreciation of Provana. He is a man of the highest character, and you may very well waive all conventionality where he is concerned." Signor Provana did not leave San Marco at the end of the week. He stayed from day to day; but he was always going to-morrow. As time went by he and Vera found a world of ideas and experiences to talk about. In the confidence that grew with every hill-side ramble, with every half-hour spent among ruined convents or Roman remains, they became licensed egotists, and talked of themselves and their own feelings with unconscious self-absorption. Led on from trifles to speak of vital things, Provana told Vera the story of his unloved youth, motherless before his sixth birthday, and soon under the subjection of a stepmother who disliked him. "I was an ugly boy," he said, "and her only child was as beautiful as the Belvedere Apollo, a creature to be worshipped, and I was made to feel the contrast. I had inherited my English mother's plain features and plain ways. I had none of the graces that make children adorable. My father was not unkind, but he was indifferent, and left me to servants, or later to my tutor, a German, middle-aged, learned, and severely practical, a man to whom affection and emotion were unknown quantities. It was always kept before me that I was to succeed to a great business, to the certainty of wealth, and the paramount purpose of my education was to make me a money-spinning machine.