"Marriage? No! What are you thinking of?" said he, starting up impatiently. "Don't you know that our engagement--such, as it is--is a profound secret from the world in general? You are nearly the only person who knows anything about it outside our own family; and even there it isn't talked about. Marriage! I only wish there was a chance of it. But she is in no hurry to give up her liberty; and I can't press her." And then he took his departure, with an injured feeling that Rupert had not been very sympathetic. "I've a good mind to offer to go with him," said Mr. Vivian to himself when his friend was gone. "I should like to see them all again; I should like to enjoy the Italian sunshine and the fresh, sweet air with Kitty, and hear her innocent little comments on the remains of mediaeval art that her father is sure to be raving about. But it is better not. I might forget myself some day. I might say what could not be unsaid. And then, poor, little Kitty, it would be hard both for you and for me. No, I won't go. Stay in Italy and get married, Kitty: that is the best thing for us both. You will have forgotten your old friend by the time you come back to London; and I shall drag on at the old round, with the same weary, clanking chain at my heels which nobody suspects. Good God!" cried Rupert, with a sudden burst of passion which would have startled the friends who had seen in him nothing but the perfectly self-possessed, cold-natured, well-mannered man of the world, "what a fool a man can make of himself in his youth, and repent it all his life afterwards in sackcloth and ashes--yet repent it in vain--in vain!" Percival Heron did not choose to announce his coming to his friends. He travelled furiously, as it was his fashion to travel when he went abroad, and arrived at the little village, on the outskirts of which stood the Villa Venturi, so late in the evening that he preferred to take a bed at the inn, and sup there, rather than disturb his own people until morning. He enjoyed the night at the inn. It was a place much frequented by fishermen, who came to fill their bottles before going out at night, or to talk over the events of the previous day's fishing. There was a garden behind the house--a garden full of orange and I lemon trees--from which sweet breaths of fragrance were wafted to the nostrils of the guests as they sat within the little hostelry. Percival could speak Italian well, and understood the _patois_ of the fishermen. He had a wonderful gift for languages; and it pleased him to sit up half the night, drinking the rough wine of the country, smoking innumerable cigarettes, and laughing heartily at the stories of the fisher-folk, until the simple-minded Italians were filled with admiration and astonishment at this _Inglese_ who was so much more like one of themselves than any of the _Inglesi_ that they had ever met.