The other occupant of the room was a lady; but M'Caskey could only see the heavy folds of her dark velvet dress as she sat apart, and so distant that he could not hear her voice. “So, then, it comes to this!” said Maitland, stopping in his walk and facing where she sat: “I have made this wearisome journey for nothing! Would it not have been as easy to say he would not see me? It was no pleasure to me to travel some hundred miles and be told at the end of it I had come for nothing.” She murmured something inaudible to M'Caskey, but to which Maitland quickly answered: “I know all that; but why not let _me_ hear this from his own lips, and let _him_ hear what I can reply to it? He will tell _me_ of the vast sums I have squandered and the heavy debts I have contracted; and I would tell _him_ that in following his rash counsels I have dissipated years that would have won me distinction in any land of Europe.” Again she spoke; but before she uttered many words he broke suddenly in with, “No, no, no! ten thousand times no! I knew the monarchy was rotten--rotten to the very core; but I said, Better to die in the street _à cheval_ than behind the arras on one's knees. Have it out with the scoundrels, and let the best man win,--that was the advice _I_ gave. Ask Caraffa, ask Filangieri, ask Acton, if I did not always say, 'If the king is not ready to do as much for his crown as the humblest peasant would for his cabin, let him abdicate at once.'” She murmured something, and he interrupted her with: “Because I never did--never would--and never will trust to priestcraft. All the intrigues of the Jesuits, all the craft of the whole College of Cardinals, will not bring back confidence in the monarchy. But why do I talk of these things to you? Go back and ask him to see me. Say that I have many things to tell him; say”--and here the mockery of his voice became conspicuous--“that I would wish much to have his advice on certain points.--And why not?” cried he aloud to something she said; “has my new nobility no charm for him? Well, then, I am ready to strike a bargain with him. I owe Caffarelli two hundred and eighty thousand francs, which I mean to pay, if I take to the highway to do it. Hush! don't interrupt me. I am not asking he should pay this for me,--all I want is that he will enable me to sell that villa which he gave me some years ago beyond Caserta. Yes, the Torricelia; I know all that,--it was a royal present. It never had the more value in my eyes for that; and perhaps the day is not far distant when the right to it may be disputed. Let him make out my title, such as it is, so that I can sell it. There are Jews who will surely take it at one-half its worth. Get him to consent to this, and I am ready to pledge my word that he has seen the last of me.” “He gave it to you as a wedding-present, Norman,” said she, haughtily; and now her deep-toned voice rung out clear and strong; “and it will be an unpardonable offence to ask him this.”