I left her with a happy smile on her face, and way down in me I could hear my soul laughing at the wise old country lawyer who had got Muggs so securely placed in his rogue's gallery. He had been reading law in a better book than any on his shelves. I had once smiled when I had read in one of Mr. Chesterton's essays that “Christianity looks for the honest man inside the thief.” I said to myself that I had never seen the honest man aforementioned. But here he was at last. I described him to Betsey. “The love of that woman has done it,” said she. “The love of a good woman is a big thing,” I answered, as I put my arm around her. “Kind o' like the finger o' Jesus touching the eyes o' the blind--that's the way it looks to me.” Next day we drove to Naples. Good-by, Rome, city of lovely shapes and jeweled walls and golden ceilings, graveyard of races and empires, paradise of saints and industrious marryers! How's that for a valedictory? Well, you see, I bought a guitar, and it's time I began to practise. Naples is different. It's a kind of theater. There the very poor play the part of the starving mendicant as soon as they are able to walk; the cheap tradesman plays the self-sacrificing saint; the fairly well-to-do man plays the part of a millionaire with his trap and horses on the Via Roma, and every driver plays the tyrant. The song of the lash, which had its part in the ancient music of Persia, fills the air of the old city. It worried us, and we went to Sicily and spent a month at Taormina--a place of which I do not dare to speak for fear of dropping into poetry, and when I drop into poetry I make a good deal of a splash, as you may have observed, and it takes me a week to get dry. Norris fell in love with it, and so did the ladies. I wondered how I was going to get them to move, but not for long. Gwendolyn and I, sitting alone in the old Greek theater one lovely afternoon, had the talk for which I had been watching my chance. We sat looking out between the time-worn columns at Ætna and the sea. “I'm tired of ancient history!” said she, closing her guide-book. “Let's try modern history,” I suggested. “If you will let me be your Baedeker for a minute I should like to point out to you a noble structure in America which is 'clothed in majestic simplicity.'” “What is it?” she asked, eagerly. “The character of Richard Forbes,” I answered. “There's one fact in his history of supreme importance to you and me.” “Only one!” she exclaimed. “At least one,” I answered. “It is this: for years he has known every unpleasant fact in the story of your father's life.” “Uncle Soc,” she interrupted, with a look of joy in her face, “is it--is it really true, or are you just saying it to please me?”