'I haven't seen the fellow for years,' he exclaimed, 'but can you fancy such an animal being a brother of Cecilia's?' 'Odd, isn't it?' said an English voice from the darkness of the stairs. 'Infernally odd!' And Charles Grammont, bearded, bloated, unclean, unwholesome, stepped into the sunlight and poisoned it. 'Who is this fellow?' asked Arthur quietly. 'Charles Grammont,' I answered. 'Charles Grammont?' he repeated; and then, hastening to obliterate the memory of his unlucky speech, he plunged into an explanation of his concerns with Grammont, and I withdrew a little. But in a moment I heard Grammont's voice raised in high anger. 'And what brings Arthur Clyde acting as my sister's messenger? Could they find nobody but a ------' If I should repeat here on paper the epithets the man used, I should be almost as great a blackguard as he was to use them. They were words abominable and horrible. I know by my anger at them now--then I had no time to feel for myself--that if a man had used them to me, and I had held a weapon in my hand, I should have killed him. Arthur raised his cane, and, but that I seized his wrist, he would have struck the insulter across the face. It was an impulse only, and when I felt his wrist relaxing I released it, and it fell down by his side. 'Come away, Calvotti,' he said, 'or I shall disgrace myself and do this man a mischief.' But if I could share at the moment in the feeling of anger which Grammont's hideous insults had inspired, I could not and I cannot understand the bitter and passionate resentment with which Arthur nourished the memory of them. For days after, not a waking hour passed by without a break of sudden anger from him when he recalled the words to mind. I did my best to calm him, and in each case succeeded in persuading him that it was less than useless to retain the memory of insult so conveyed by such a man. But in a little while he broke out again, and after a time I allowed him to rage himself out. 'Why did you restrain me?' he cried one day as we walked together. 'The ruffian deserved a thrashing. I care nothing for what he said of me, but a man who could speak of his sister in that way is not fit to live. For God's sake, Calvotti, let us go away somewhere out of reach of this man. I am not safe. I hardly know myself. If I met him I should kill him then and there.' 'My dear Arthur,' I said at last, 'this is childish, and unworthy of you. The man is a ruffian by nature, and was mad with drink. Forget him, and any mad and drunken thing he may have said.' 'Well,' said Arthur, with a visible effort, 'the blackguard disappears from my scheme of things. I have done with him. There! It's all over. What shall we do to-night? Let us go out together and look at Giovanna's Palace by moonlight. A blow on the bay would do me good, and you might find an inspiration for a picture. Who knows? Will you go?'