The Ashes sent money, and, though Kitty was at the moment not fit to travel, prepared to come. Warington, who had just closed the eyes of his sister, went at once. He was now the last of his family, without any ties that he could not lawfully break. Within two days of his arrival in Paris, Madame d'Estrées had promised to marry him in three months, to break off all her Paris associations, and to give her life henceforward into his somewhat stern hands. The visit to Venice was part of the price that he had had to pay for her decision. Marguerite pleaded, with a shudder, that she must have a little amusement before she went to live in Dumfriesshire; and he had been obliged to acquiesce in her arrangement with Donna Laura--stipulating only that he should be their escort and guardian. What had moved him to such an act? His reasons can only be guessed at. Warington was a man of religion, a Calvinist by education and inheritance, and of a silent and dreamy temperament. He had been intimate with very few women in his life. His sister had been a second mother to him, and both of them had been the guardians of their younger brother. When this adored brother fell shot through the lungs in the hopeless defence of Lady Blackwater's reputation, it would have been natural enough that Markham should hate the woman who had been the occasion of such a calamity. The sister, a pious and devoted Christian, had indeed hated her, properly and duly, thenceforward. Markham, on the contrary, accepted his brother's last commission without reluctance. In this matter at least Lady Blackwater had not been directly to blame; his mind acquitted her; and her soft, distressed beauty touched his heart. Before he knew where he was she had made an impression upon him that was to be life-long. Then gradually he awoke to a full knowledge of her character. He suffered, but otherwise it made no difference. Finding it was then impossible to persuade her to marry him, he watched over her as best he could for some years, passing through phases of alternate hope and disgust. His sister's affection for him was clouded by his strange relation to the Jezebel who in her opinion had destroyed their brother. He could not help it; he could only do his best to meet both claims upon him. During her lingering passage to the grave, his sister had nearly severed him from Marguerite d'Estrées. She died, however, just in time, and now here he was in Venice, passing through what seemed to him one of the ante-rooms of life, leading to no very radiant beyond. But, radiant or no, his path lay thither. And at the same time he saw that although Marguerite felt him to be her only refuge from poverty and disgrace, she was painfully afraid of him, and afraid of the life into which he was leading her. * * * * *