Six months before, he had first seen Madame Orme as "Deborah," in Mosenthal's popular drama, and, charmed by her face and figure, had attempted to make her acquaintance. But his floral offerings had been rejected, his jewels and notes returned, his presentation refused, his visits interdicted; and as usually occurs in natures like his, opposition to his wishes intensified them, cold indifference and denial only deepened and strengthened his determination to crush all barriers. His pride was wounded, his vanity sorely piqued, and to compel her acknowledgment of his power, her submission to his sway, became for the while his special aim, his paramount purpose. Hence he loitered at Naples, seeking occasions, lying in wait for an opportunity to open a campaign that promised him new triumphs. Dr. Plymley was an English physician travelling with an invalid wife and consumptive son, and having been consulted by Mrs. Orme on several occasions in Milan, had at length been prevailed upon by General Laurance to arrange an apparently casual introduction. It was a cloudless spring day, and leaving Mr. and Mrs. Waul to read a package of American papers, Mrs. Orme walked away toward the lonely outlines of the Serapeon. The delicious balmy atmosphere, the interest of the objects that lined the drive from Naples, and the exercise of wandering from point to point had brought a delicate glow to her cheeks, and a brighter carmine to her lips; and beneath the white chip hat, with its wreath of clustering pink convolvulus lying on her golden hair, the lovely face seemed almost unsurpassed in its witchery. She wore a sea-green dress of some soft fabric that floated in the wind as she moved, and over her shoulders was wound a white fleecy mantle fastened at the throat by a costly green cameo, which also secured a spray of lemon flowers that lavished their fragrance on the bright warm air. Closing her parasol, she walked down to the ruined Temple, and approached the wonderful cipollino columns that bear such mysterious attestation of the mutations of land and sea, of time and human religions. Since the days of Agrippina and Julia, had a fairer prouder face shone under the hoary marble shafts, and mirrored itself in the marvellous mosaic floor, than that which now looked calmly down on the placid water flowing so silently over the costly pavements, where sovereigns once reverently trod?