If I have made it appear that Tiretta was a masterful character, I have sketched his portrait awry, and must revise it. He was, in truth, in many ways an entirely weak creature, impressionable, emotional, and lacking the first quality of decision. One sees how he had been persuaded to dance attendance on Fortune, lingering on in her ante-room in the vain hopes of that summons to her presence which a more resolute soul would have enforced. One sees how inconsistent he could be to his own self-sacrifices, when their fruits seemed to him to be unjustifiably delayed. He was full of passionate impulses and impotent remorses--a man in courage, a woman in regrets. Yet he had two qualities which were enough to redeem him utterly in all eyes that were truly feminine, and those were charm and lovableness. He was above all things lovable, and by virtue of that disposition alone might easily have captured and absorbed into his own a more guileful heart than that of the simple, affectionate child in whose soft bosom he had awakened the unconscious instincts of motherhood. Isabella startled to the knowledge of his reappearance with the mad rapture of a mother receiving back her long-lost child. Now all would be well, her fluttering, unreasoning heart assured her; now all would be well, her illogical sex proclaimed. She could think of nothing but that he had returned, that the long, long days of doubt and anguish were ended, that the good reasons he had had for imposing them on her would be made lovingly clear. All the sorrows, the remorses, the dutiful resolutions of the past drear months took wing in a moment like doleful crows. For that, no doubt, her cruel disillusionment about her father was part to blame. Yet, all said, love, without question, would have had its way with her in the end. She had not the power to resist so dear an importunate; she was swayed in all things by affection, and she had no one trustworthy weapon in her soul’s armoury to oppose to it.