"_Il signor Inglese_," remarked the host to his friend.--"_Buon' giorno, eccellenza, buon' giorno_,"--lifting his white night cap, and bowing with a great flourish. The young man touched his hat with a careless smile, and half-turning his horse, asked,-- "Padrone, has my man passed this way?" He had, to Morton's eye, rather the easy manner of a well-bred American, than the more distant bearing common with an English gentleman. "_Eccellenza, si,_" replied the padrone,--"he passed a quarter of an hour ago, with the birds your excellency has shot." The young man rode on, passing Morton, as he stood by the roadside. "I have seen that face before," said the latter to himself--"in a dream, for what I know, but I have seen it." It was a frank and open face, manly, yet full of kindliness, not without a tinge of melancholy. "Come of it what will," thought the fugitive, "I will speak to him." He walked after the retiring horseman, and when an angle of the road concealed him from the inn, quickened his pace almost to a run. But at that moment the Englishman struck into a sharp trot, and disappeared over the ridge of a hill. Morton soon gained sight of him again, and kept him in view for about a mile, when he saw him enter the gateway belonging to a small villa, between the road and the water. It was a very pretty spot; the grounds terraced to the edge of the lake; with laurels, cypresses, box hedges, a fountain or two, an artificial grotto, and a superb diorama of water and mountains. Morton stood waiting at the gate. At length he saw a female domestic, evidently Italian, passing through the shrubbery before the house, and disappearing behind it. In a few minutes more, a solemn personage appeared at the door, whom he would have known at a mile's distance for an old English servant. He stood looking with great gravity out upon the grounds. Morton approached, and accosting him in Italian, asked to see his master. John was not a proficient in the tongue of Ariosto and Dante. Indeed, in his intercourse with the natives, he had seen occasion for one phrase alone, and that a somewhat pithy and repellant one,--_Andate al diavolo_. He glared with supreme and savage scorn on the tatterdemalion stranger, and uttered his talismanic words,-- "_Andarty al devillio!_" Morton changed his tactics; and, looking fixedly at the human mastiff, said in English,-- "Go to your master, sir, and tell him that I wish to speak with him." The Saxon words and the tone of authority coming from one whom he had taken for a vagrant beggar, astonished the old man beyond utterance. He stared for a moment,--turned to obey,--then turned back again,-- "Mr. Wentworth is at breakfast, sir." The last monosyllable was spoken in a doubtful tone, the speaker being perplexed between respect for the tone and language of the stranger, and contempt for his vagabond attire. "Then bring me pen, ink, and paper--I will write to him."