Litchfield enquirer., 1874-06-11
From Scribner'a Monthly.
 ADiNA.
IS TWO PARTS PART ii.

Sam Sesope looked extremely y-annoyetl
 when beganfo tell him of my encounter
 with onr friend, and l Saw there WAS stiii
 q cantankcrous something in he depths
 of his heart intensely hostile to fairness.
 1t Was characteristic of his peculiar ttnl-
 per that his happiness, as am accepted
 lover, had hot disposed him to graceful concessions He treated! his bliss ;s his
 own private property, anl was as little Ill the hHmor to diifuse its influence as he would have been to send out Ill charity q choice dish from an unfinished dinner. Nevertheless, think he might have stiiiiy admitted that there was grain of reason
 indiscreetiy accurate in my report of our
 interview. 1 had been impressed, indeed,
 with something picturesqueiy tragic ill
 the poor boys condition, and, to do per
 feet justice to the picture, 1 told him he
 had flung down his hat on the earth as a
 gauntlet of defiance and talked about his TeUenge. Scrope hereupon looked fierce
 ly disgusted and pronounced him the
 atrical jacanapes; but he authorized me
 to drop him line saying that he would
 speak with him couple of days later. I
 was surprised at Scrope's consenting to
 see him, but perceived that he was mak-
 ing a conscientious effort to shrink none
 of the disagreeables of the matter ''I won't have him stamping and shouting in
 the house here" he said. 'I'll also meet
 him at the Coliseum He named his
 hour and 1 dispatched to Lariccia three lines of incorrect but courteous Italian.
 It was better,-far better,-that they should not have met What passed be- tween them Scrope requested me on his return to excuse him from repeating; suf- fec 1t that Angelo wac an impudent pup py, and that he hoped never to hear of him again. Had Angelo, at last, I asked, received any compensation? "Not a farthing y cried Scrope, and walked out of the room. Evidently the two young men had been source of immitigable of fense to each other. Angelo had promis- ed to speak to him fair, and inclined to believe had done so; but the very change in his appearance, by seeming to chal- lenge my companions sympathy in too peremptory fashion, had had the irrita- ting effect of menace. Scrope had been contemptuous, and his awkward, ungra- cious Italian had doubtless made him seem more so. One can't handle Italians with contempt; those who know them have learned what may be done with moderate amount of superficial conces- sion. Angelo had replied in wrath, and, as l afterwards learned, had demanded, as right, the restitution of the topaz in exchange for the sum received for 1t. ScrOpe had rej joined that if he took that tone he should get nothing at all, and the youth had retorted with reckless and insulting threats. What had prevent ed them from coming to blows, I know not, no sign of fiinching, certainly, on my part. Face to face, he had not seemed to Angelo so easy to strangle, and that saving grain of discretion which mingles with all Italian passion had whis- pered to the young man to postpone his revenge. Without taking melodramatic view of things, it seemed to me that Scrope had an evil chance in waiting for reT1r~pa, defluito vision of a cloaked assassin lurking under a dark archway, but 1 thought 1t perTrttfy possible that Angelo might make himself disagreeable. His simply tell ing his story up and down Rome to whom soever would listen to him, might be grave annoyance; though indeed Scrope had the advantage that most people might refuse to believe ill the existence of a gem of which its owner was so little inclined to boast. The whole situation, at all events, made me extremely nervous. I cursed my companion one day for hun grier Jew than Shylock, and pitied him the next as victim of moral hallucina- ton. If we gave him time, he aoould come to his senses; he would repay poor Angelo with interest. Meanwhile, how ever, could do nothing, for felt that it was worse than useless to suggest to Scrope that he was i'll danger. He would have soorned the idea of ranting Italian making him swerve an inch from his cho- sen path.
 I am uhable to say whether Angelo's "imprudence" had seemed to relieve him, generally, from his VOW to conceal the in taglio; a few words, at all events, from Miss Washington, a couple of evenings later, reminded me of the original reser- vation he had made to the vow Mrs. Washington was at the piano, decipher- ing new piece of music, and Scrope, who was fond of puzzle, as puzzle, was pretending, half iocosely, to superin- tend and correct her. live seen it' Adina said to me, with grave expanded eyes; ''I've seen the wonderful topaz. He says you are ill the secret. He won't tell me how he came by it. Honestly, I hope"
 1 tried to laugh "You mustn't inves- tigate too closely the honesty of hunters for antiquities. It's hardly dishonest in their code to treat loose cameos and snuff boxes as pickpockets treat purses"
 She looked at me in shy surprise, as if I had made really cruel joke. ''He says that lsmust wear 1t one of these days as a medallion, she went on. "But l shall not. The stone is beautiful, but should feel most uncomfortable in carrying the Emperor Tiberius so near my heart. Wasn't he one of the bad Emperors of the worst? It.is almost pollution to have thing that he had looked at and touched coming to one in such direct de- scent. His image almost spells for me the beauty of the stone and I'm very glad Mir. Scrope keeps 1t out of sight" This seemed very becoming state of mind in Q blonde angel of New England origin.
 The days passed by and Angelo's Gre venge" still hung fire. Scrope never met his fate at short turning of one of the dusky Roman streets; he came in punct- ually every evening at eleven o'clock. I wondered whether our breeding friend had already spent the sinister force of nature formed to be lazily contented. I hoped so, but I was wrong. We had gone to walk one afternoon, the ladies, Scrope and I,-in the charming Villa Borghese, and to escape from the rattle of the fashionable world and its distrac- tion, we had wandered away to an unfre- quented corner where the old moldering wall and the slim black expresses and the untrodden grass made, beneath the splen- did Roman sky, the most harmonious of pictures. Of course there was a messy stone hemicycle not far off, and cracked benches with grifins' feet, where one might sit and gossip and watch the lizards scamper in the sun. We had done so for some half an hour when Adina espied the first violet of the year glimmering at the root of cypress. She made haste to rise and gather 1t, and then wandered further,
 in the hope of giving it few companions.
 Scrope sat and watched her as she moved
 slowly away, trailing her long shadow on
 the grass and dropping he head from side
 to side in her charming quest. It was
 not, know, that he felt no impulse to
 join her: but that he was in love, fer the
 moment, with looking at her from where
 he sat- Her search carried her some dis