“There was, besides, another and most cogent reason for my being a widow just now. The Heathcotes are here, on their way to Rome, and, like all English people, eager to go everywhere, do everything, and know everybody; the consequence is eternal junketing and daily dinner- parties. I need not tell you that in such a caravanserai as this is, some one would surely turn up who should recognize me; so there was nothing for it but to kill Captain M. and go into crape and seclusion. As my bereavement is only a sham, I perform the affliction without difficulty. Our mourning, too, becomes us, and, everything considered, the incident has spared us much sight-seeing and many odious acquaintances. “As it is highly important that I should see and consult you, you must come out here at once. As the friend and executor of poor 'dear Penthony,' you can see me freely, and I really want your advice. Do I understand you aright about Ludlow? If so, the creature is a greater fool than I thought him. Marrying him is purely out of the question. Of all compacts, the connubial demands implicit credulity; and if this poor man's tea were to disagree with him, he 'd be screaming out for antidotes before the servants, and I conclude that he cannot expect _me_ to believe in _him_. The offer you have made him on my part is a great and brilliant one, and, for the life of me, I cannot see why he should hesitate about it, though I, perhaps, suspect it to be this. Like most fast men,--a very shallow class, after all,--his notion is that life, like a whist-party, requires an accomplice. Now, I would beg him to believe this is not the case, and that for two people who can play their cards so well as we can, it is far better to sit down at separate tables, where no suspicion of complicity can attach to us. I, at least, understand what suits my own interest, which is distinctly and emphatically to have nothing to do with him. You say that he threatens,- -threatens to engulf us both. If he were a woman, the menace would frighten me, but men are marvellously conservative in their selfishness, and so I read it as mere threat.