"Do you think that you can be happy--as things are, Marcia?" he asked. "Your friend, Mr. Borden, doesn't think so. He came down--he was just a little melodramatic, I think--hoping to incite me to a great sacrifice. I was to play the part of the self-denying hero. I was to give away the thing I loved, for its own sake. I had no fancy for the rôle, Marcia." "And I should hate you in it, dear," she assured him. "Mr. James Borden will always be a dear friend, but he must learn what every one else in the world has had to learn--a lesson of self-denial. He will find some one else." "I am not jealous of the man," the Marquis said. "I am jealous of just one thought that his coming may have brought into your brain--one instinct." "Don't be," she begged. "It will go just as it came. It is part of a woman's nature, I suppose. Every now and then it tortures." Luncheon was served excellently but without undue haste. They fell to discussing lighter topics. "You will be interested to hear," he told her, "that my daughter Letitia is engaged to be married to Charles Grantham. I am quite expecting that by Christmas I shall be alone. I find Letitia a charming and dutiful companion," he went on, "but I must confess that I look forward to her marriage with some satisfaction. It has occurred to me that if it suited your work, we might travel for a time, or rather settle down--in Italy, if you prefer it. There is so much there to keep one always occupied. In Florence, for instance, one commences a new education every spring." "I should love it," she answered, with an enthusiasm which still lacked something. "A villa somewhere on the slopes of Fiesole," he continued, "with a garden, a real Italian garden, with fountains and statuary, and straight paths, and little strips of deep lawn, and a few cypress trees. And there must be a view of Florence. I think that you would work well there, Marcia. If things go as I expect, I thought that we might leave England about Christmas-time, and loiter a little on the Riviera till the season for the cold winds has passed. Browning wrote of the delights of an English spring, but he lived in Florence." "There is so much there that I am longing to see again," she murmured.