“Well, sir, I 'm proud to know it,” said the Colonel, “not only because it was my own readin' of 'em, but whenever I hear anything good or generous, I feel as if—bein' a human crittur myself—I came in for some of the credit of it. The doubt was never mine, sir. It was my friend, Mr. Harvey Winthrop, that thought how, perhaps, there might be a scruple, or a hesitation, or a sort of backwardness about knowin' a gal with such a dreadful story tacked to her. 'In Eu-rôpe, sir,' says he, 'they won't have them sort of things; they ain't like our people, who are noways displeased at a bit of notoriety.
“There!—look there!—the whole question is decided already,” said Agincourt, as he drew the other towards the window and pointed to the street below. “There go the two girls together; they have driven off in that carriage, and Clara has her home once more in the midst of those who love her.”
“I'm bound to say, sir,” said Quackinboss, after a moment's pause, “that you Britishers are a fine people. You have, it is true, too many class distinctions and grades of rank among you, but you have a main hearty sympathy that teaches you to deal with human sufferin' as a thing that makes all men kindred; and whenever it's your lot to have to do a kindness, you double the benefit by the delicacy you throw into it.”
“That's a real good fellow,” said O'Shea, as Quackinboss quitted the room.
“Is he not?” cried Agincourt. “If I ever harbor an ungenerous thought about Yankees, I know how to correct it, by remembering that he 's 'One of Them.'”
CHAPTER XII. CONCLUSION
Most valued reader, can you number amongst your life experiences that very suggestive one of revisiting some spot where you had once sojourned pleasantly, with scarcely any of the surroundings which first embellished it? With all the instruction and self-knowledge derivable from such an incident, there is a considerable leaven of sorrow, and even some bitterness. It is so very hard to believe that we are ourselves more changed than all around. We could have sworn that waterfall was twice as high, and certainly the lake used not to be the mere pond we see it; and the cedars,—surely these are not the cedars we were wont to sit under with Marian long ago? Oh dear! when I think that I once fancied I could pass my life in this spot, and now I am actually impatient for day-dawn that I may leave it!
With something of this humor three persons sat at sunset under the old beech-trees at the Bagni di Lucca. They were characters in this true history that we but passingly presented to our reader, and may well have lapsed from his memory. They were Mr. and Mrs. Morgan and Mr. Mosely, who had by the merest accident once more met and renewed acquaintance.
“My wife remembered you, sir, the moment you entered the table d'hôte room. She said, 'There 's that young man of Trip and Mosely's, that we saw here—was it three years ago?'”