"You won't be going early."
"No;—I never do anything early. But I don't like a fuss just as I am going. I'll get down and drive away to catch some train. My man will manage it all."
"You go to London?"
"I shall be in Italy within a week. I hate Italy, but I think I hate England worse. If I believed in heaven and thought I were going there, what a hurry I should be in to die."
"Let us know how Popenjoy is."
"You'll be sure to know whether he is dead or alive. There's nothing else to tell. I never write letters except to Knox, and very few to him. Good-night."
When the Marquis was in his room, his courier, or the man so called, came to undress him. "Have you heard anything to-day?" he asked in Italian. The man said that he had heard. A letter had reached him that afternoon from London. The letter had declared that little Popenjoy was sinking. "That will do Bonni," he said. "I will get into bed by myself." Then he sat down and thought of himself, and his life, and his prospects,—and of the prospects of his enemies.
CHAPTER LIII.
POOR POPENJOY!