“One night he was engaged to attend a lady and her daughter from their home to the play, and back again after the performance. This woman was the widow of an Italian nobleman, Bowenni by name, who was driven from his home for political reasons. He died in London leaving the widow and daughter with an income which by prudent management was amply sufficient for their needs. The daughter was twenty-four years old at the time I have mentioned, a girl of most rare education and refinement. Like all Italians she was a born linguist, and spoke French, German, Greek and Latin with fluency. Her father was a scholar, and for years he was the tutor and the only playmate of this daughter. Together they studied Homer and Plato (the wonders of Greece were just then for the first time being opened up in England), and the beauties of the French Moralists they dissected day by day with ever increasing delight; for the girl had that fine glad recipiency for the trinity of truth, beauty and goodness, each of which comprehends the other. Her father took good care that only the best of mental nourishment should be hers. In their exile they had traveled through Egypt, spent months in Denmark, Spain and Portugal, knew Rome, Venice and the Mediterranean by heart, and wherever they went, the father secured the best books of the place--for you must remember that in those days the books of an author very seldom went out of his own country, certainly were never offered for sale in other countries, and the works of French dramatists were almost unknown in England. “After our youth had left the mother and daughter at the door of their dwelling, and they had entered, the daughter asked: ‘My mother, didst thou notice the respectful attitude of the young man whom we engaged to attend us?--how alert he was to see that no accident did befall us? Yet he spoke no word, nor forced on us attention, but only seemed intent on his duty doing.’ “‘Yes,’ said the mother, ‘a youth of goodly parts and fair to view withal; not large in stature, but strong. He does not bear himself pompously, and bend back as other servants do; but the manly chest--it leads, and methinks the crown is in its proper place. We will him engage again, for honest work well done shall ever bring its own reward.’ “But I must hasten on, and not spend time with mere detail. Suffice it to say, that the young man was hired to attend the noble lady and the daughter to the theatre each Thursday night, and that after four weeks the daughter suggested that as the young man was so gentlemanly in his bearing, so modest, and of such comely features, that there would be no harm for him to attend them as their friend and escort. ‘No one need know,’ she naïvely said, and after much misgiving on the mother’s part the plan was suggested to the young man, who only bowed with uncovered head and said, ‘Madame, I am your hired servant, and therefore at your service to do all that you may command, which cannot be but right.’