“Certainly they would make the condition,” said Harry, promptly. “Could anyone be so cruel, do you think, Paolo, as to take away her last prop from my mother? They are everything to each other, as you can see.” “It is true,” said Paolo, much crestfallen. And next day he took a tearful leave, kissing Liddy’s hand with respectful deference. The unusual salutation made her blush quite unnecessarily. It was a resignation of all pretensions on Paolo’s part. He could have made, he said afterwards, as great a sacrifice to his love as any man; but to have lived on what they called the Fells, was more than it was possible to contemplate. But he was a little consoled by a burst of bright weather in London, and saw the Parks and the Row in all their glory, and lost his heart to a great many other English young ladies before he carried it, pieced up again so as to be serviceable for actual living, but in a sadly battered and shattered condition, back again to Leghorn; where he was a great authority upon everything English to the end of his days. Rita turned out to be right, as she so often was. Her father, after the first shock, was glad beyond measure that the venture had been made and proved successful, and that the embargo was taken off his native country, and he could permit him to return. The accumulations of Uncle Henry’s money was enough to make a pretty, old-fashioned house out of Birrenshead, where the Harry Joscelyns settled down, Mr. Bonamy with them, though without giving up the Italian villa and its associations. Mr. Bonamy got a C.B. and many compliments when he retired from the service, though he had never been anything more than a Vice-Consul. As for Lydia and her concerns, it is needless to say that they ended prosperously; for what was there that Lady Brotherton could refuse to her only son? and Sir John saw only through her eyes. So this marriage was accomplished also towards the autumn, before the year was out, from the time of their first acquaintance. Harry and his children were known to be coming home by that time, as soon as the house was ready for them, “Which was something for mother to look forward to,” Joan said. “A thing to look forward to is almost better than a thing she’s got, to mother,” according to that authority. “She can’t fret about it till she has it.” But nobody could be more tender and sympathetic than Joan when Lydia was married and went away, leaving a blank that nothing could fill up. “It’s hard to say what’s the good of us women,” she said, “to rear children and never have them but when they’re babies, and think all the world of them, and watch them go away. Phil and me, we are best without any, though that’s a hard trial too. But, mother, don’t you make a fuss, poor dear. It’s the way of the world, and it’s the course of nature, and there isn’t a word to say.”