Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/260

 a carriage for him Ralph came more than once to the Palazzo Roccanera. A fortnight elapsed, at the end of which Ralph announced to Lord Warburton that he thought after all he wouldn't go to Sicily. The two men had been dining together after a day spent by the latter in ranging about the Campagna. They had left the table, and Warburton, before the chimney, was lighting a cigar, which he instantly removed from his lips.

"Won't go to Sicily? Where then will you go?"

"Well, I guess I won't go anywhere," said Ralph, from the sofa, in a tone of jocosity.

"Do you mean that you will return to England?"

"Oh dear no; I will stay in Rome."

"Rome won't do for you; it's not warm enough."

"It will have to do; I will make it do. See how well I have been."

Lord Warburton looked at him a while, puffing his cigar, as if he were trying to see it.

"You have been better than you were on the journey, certainly. I wonder how you lived through that. But I don't understand your condition. I recommend you to try Sicily."

"I can't try," said poor Ralph; "I can't move further. I can't face that journey. Fancy me between Scylla and Charybdis! I don't want to die on the Sicilian plains—to be snatched away, like Proserpine in the same locality, to the Plutonian shades."

"What the deuce then did you come for?" his lordship inquired.

"Because the idea took me. I see it won't do. It really doesn't matter where I am now. I've exhausted all remedies,