“Pooh!  For a title?” cried Lady Blanchemain.  “Besides, you have prospects.  Isn’t your name Prospero?”

“I have precious little faith in oracles,” said John.

“I advise you to have more,” said Lady Blanchemain, with a smile that seemed occult.

And now her carriage entered the village, and she put him down at the telegraph office.

“Don’t wait,” said John.  “The walk from here to the Castle is nothing, and it would take you out of your way.”

“Well, good-bye, then,” said she.  “And cultivate more faith in oracles—­when they’re auspicious.”

Alone, she drew from some recondite fold of her many draperies a letter, an unsealed letter, which she opened, spread out, and proceeded to read.  It was a long letter in her ladyship’s own handsome, high-bred, old-fashioned handwriting; and it was addressed to Messrs. Farrow, Bernscot, and Tisdale, Solicitors, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London.  She read it twice through, and at last (with a smile that seemed occult) restored it to its envelope.  “Stop at the Post Office,” she said to her coachman, as they entered Roccadoro; and to her footman, giving him the letter, “Have that registered, please.”

Annunziata lay in wait for John in the garden.  She ran up, and seized him by the arm.  Then, skipping beside him, as he walked on, “Who was she?  Where did she come from?  Where did she take you?  Whom was the telegram from?” she demanded in a breath, nestling her curls against his coat-sleeve.

“Piano, piano,” remonstrated John.  “One question at a time.  Now, begin again.”

“Whom was the telegram from?” she obeyed, beginning at the end.

“Ah,” said he, “the telegram was from my friend Prospero.  He’s coming here to-morrow.  We must ask your uncle whether he can give him a bed.”

“And the old lady?” pursued Annunziata.  “Who was she?”

“The old lady was my fairy godmother,” said John, building better than he knew.

PART FOURTH

I

Pacing together backwards and forwards, as they talked, John and his friend Winthorpe presented a striking and perhaps interesting contrast.  John was tall, but Winthorpe seemed a good deal taller—­though, (trifles in these matters looming so large), had actual measurements been taken, I dare say half an inch would have covered the difference.  John was lean and sinewy, but rounded off at the joints, and of a pliant carriage, so that it never occurred to you to think of him as thin.  Winthorpe’s spare figure, spare and angular, with its greater height, held unswervingly to the plane of the perpendicular, appeared absolutely to be constructed of nothing but bone and tendon.  John’s head, with its yellow hair, its curly beard verging towards red, its pink skin, and blue eyes full of laughter, might have served a painter as a model for the head of Mirth.