Year: 1875

spected Sell-CnarleS Einngstone,
painter-were sitting in the studio
window of his delightful little villa
at Frascati, near Rome, high over
the rounded tops of woods now
lurid in the red setting sun. Be-
meath a leaden sky the gloomy
Campagna stretched like a dead
sea, and with its fair rim cut the
disk, a portentous blood-red ball,
slowly, slowly sinking.


Guy and me had been old friends
and school-fellows in England. He
was two or three years older than
myself, but that had made his
friendship for me all the tenderer,
and mine for him reverential. Be-
sides, l had looked on Gay as q
kind of genial young saint. l had
always felt rather wicked in his
company, because he really seemed
quite naturally, never to do any
thing wrong, or to have so much as
a wrong thought. He would have
chosen art as his profession, l knew,
had he been allowed a voice in the
arrangement of his own future !;
but the b lious old father who ruled
his destiny made a civil engineer
of him, without the slightest refer
ence to any possible fancy or pro-
test of the lads. Naturally, he
did not take kindly to his work,
though he buckled to it conscien-
tiously.


When I came to Italy to s.ndy
art, Guy and / kept up a pretty
brisk correspondence for about
twelvemonth. But in my second
Italian summer his letters suddenly
ceased to arrive. wrote to him
in vain hope of answer for six
months, and then let the CORES
pondence so with sigh.


/ easily ascertained that he was
alive and well, but could find out
nothing else about him that was
more reliable than the gossip re-
tailed by certain English military
men, who had tapped their lazy
fight across the sea one winter,
and perched in Rome. "Got into
a scrape about a woman, and didn't
pehave well to her, or something
of the Sort" drawled out of one
Of these amiable gentlemen. And
this was all could discover about
poor Urquehart.


But at last I heard from Guy
himself once more. Lo f! he had
inherited small fortune from
distant relation he had thrown
civil engineering overheard ; he
was coming to Rome forthwith to
study art in earnest at last; and
we must spend the ensuing summer
in Villeggiatura together, eating
6gs at Tusculum. At the time my
story begins, he had been about
six weeks in Rome, and had already
painted one or two capital little
pictures.


No village in the world drives
such a roaring trade in scandal as
grand old Rome. You have seen
how Urquehart's character went
before him, as Sir Peter Teazle's
stayed behind for the comfort of
the community, and what mercy II
met with. Now, and then circuin-
stances are generally certain facts
which one may trace like pebbles
through disturbing waves. I felt
convinced that'I should do so in
Urquehart case, If it ever pleased
him to give me his confidence.





But I could not try to thrust
myself into any chamber of his
past not freely opened to me. !
could not help guessing that there
was a shut and locked door, behind
which lurked the solution Of q
mystery. This mystery was the
great and grievous change In my
friend not to be accounted for by
the mere lapse Of two or three
years. And this change was all
the more remarkable that it was
not always obvious. No two men
could be more unlike than Urque-
hart to Urquehart in different
moods. 1t seemed to me as If
much evil had flowed into his heart
by some rent where much good
had run out. but that the poison
had never mixed with the healthy

juice of his life.


On this September evening as