That ordinary-looking middle-aged gentleman, who is just emerging from that Jeweller's shop, is Signor Goffoni. He has been there to purchase a pair of earrings for his pretty young wife, with which he purposes to bribe her into good-humour with him again. For, to say the truth, the happy couple have lately been living on the usual matrimonial terms which follow the union of Signoras, who are scarcely out of their teens, with Signors, who are half way through their 'tys. And this morning the conjugal breezes had swollen into a perfect hymeneal hurricane. It had blown divorces and separate maintenances. The Signora had gone into the customary hysterics, and the Signor had left the house with that violent bang of the street-door which is the especial property of enraged husbands. And "the cause—the cause" was precisely the same as made Mr. Othello determine to put an extinguisher upon his better-half, instead of his night-lamp. The green-eyed monster had kittened his horrid suspicions in Signor Goffoni's bosom, and had lapped up all the milk of human kindness in the dairy of his heart. He had accidentally discovered a _billet_—something more than a _doux_—addressed to his black-eyed young wife, from a gentleman calling himself the Marchese di Castellinaria, and which expressed a regard for her that—tested by the very delicate thermometer of the Signor's jealousy—did appear to him not quite so tepid as mere friendship would dictate. And he had not scrupled to say as much to the black eyes he had taken for better or for worse. Whereupon the said ebon optics had looked scissors, though they'd used none—had vowed eternal separation—_usque ad mensam et torum_—and wound up with those effective convulsions of which married ladies generally keep a plentiful supply, ready for use. Jealousy, however, had galvanized the iron of the Signor's heart, and made it no longer susceptible of being acted upon by the salt water of his wife's eyes; so, as we said before, he bounced out of the house with a bang like a human cracker. Long before evening, however, Goffoni had relented; he felt convinced that he had wronged his dear little wife by his unjust suspicions, and arrived at the sage conclusion that he was a brute and she was an angel; so that an hour before his usual time for quitting business he hurried off to the nearest Jeweller's to buy her a pair of earrings, determined to hasten home and shed over her the diamond drops of repentance. But on arriving at his domicile, he found the dark-eyed young partner of his bosom absent from home. Could his unkind treatment have driven her from his roof? The very thought was stilettoes. He rang furiously and inquired of the servant concerning her mistress. She had quitted the house about half an hour ago, leaving directions that the letter which the maid then presented should be delivered to the Signor immediately on his return. He seized it. It was unaddressed, and ran as follows:—