Luigi and she stayed to dinner, the hour for which at the Chase was the primitive one of five. Before leaving it was arranged that they should return on the Thursday following, Luigi to remain _en permanence_, and Giovanna to make the Chase her home till Maylings should be ready to receive her. Sir Gilbert did not fail to present her with a cheque for her first quarter’s allowance. To Luigi he gave one for fifty pounds, together with a note to his tailor, in order that the young man might be enabled to furnish himself with an outfit such as became the grandson of Sir Gilbert Clare and the heir of Withington Chase. His last words as he held Luigi’s hand for a moment at parting were—— “My boy, as you behave to me, so will you find that I shall behave to you.” CHAPTER XXI. AFFAIRS AT ST. OSWYTH’S Leaving Giovanna and Luigi to establish themselves in their new home and accustom themselves, so far as they may be able, to that changed condition of life to which the success of Captain Verinder’s nefarious scheme has elevated them, we will hie back awhile to St. Oswyth’s and ascertain how fortune has been dealing with our friends in that pleasant little town since we parted from them last. When Mrs. Lisle, in one of her letters, informed her son that, owing to the loss of the greater part of their fortune the Miss Thursbys had been compelled to give up Vale View House and remove to an inexpensive cottage in the suburbs, she stated no more than the simple fact. Through the rascality of their agent, whose misdeeds had not been brought to light till he was beyond the reach of earthly reckoning, the sisters had lost the greater part of their property past all hope of recovery. All they had left was a somewhat fluctuating income, derivable from railway stock, which brought them in about two hundred a year. To this would be added the rental derivable from Vale View, which was their own property, as soon as a tenant should be found for it; for the present, however, it was standing empty. A matter of something over a hundred pounds had accrued to them from the sale of their surplus furniture and such other things as they no longer had a use for. More than all, they had felt the parting from Flossie, their gentle, steady-going old pony, but they had the consolation of knowing that in Mrs. Rudd it had found a mistress who would treat it with no less kindness than they had done. It had been generally supposed among their friends and acquaintances, in view of their simple and unostentatious mode of life, that the sisters must have a few snug thousands—the result of their savings through a long course of years—put away somewhere: but such a supposition was wholly at variance with fact. In the belief that their income was as safe as the Bank of England, the sisters had never deemed it necessary to put by any portion of it, but had disbursed every shilling of whatever surplus was left in secret charity.