"Intimately.The other day my mother wrote to me from England, after having seen Ada.This escapade of Monkton's has outraged all her friends.They have been entreating her to break off the match, which it seems she could do if she liked.Even her mother, sordid and selfish as she is, has been obliged at last, in common decency, to side with the rest of the family; but the good, faithful girl won't give Monkton up.She humors his insanity;declares he gave her a good reason in secret for going away; says she could always make him happy when they were together in the old Abbey, and can make him still happier when they are married;in short, she loves him dearly, and will therefore believe in him to the last.Nothing shakes her.She has made up her mind to throw away her life on him, and she will do it.""I hope not.Mad as his conduct looks to us, he may have some sensible reason for it that we cannot imagine.Does his mind seem at all disordered when he talks on ordinary topics?""Not in the least.When you can get him to say anything, which is not often, he talks like a sensible, well-educated man.Keep silence about his precious errand here, and you would fancy him the gentlest and most temperate of human beings; but touch the subject of his vagabond of an uncle, and the Monkton madness comes out directly.The other night a lady asked him, jestingly of course, whether he had ever seen his uncle's ghost.He scowled at her like a perfect fiend, and said that he and his uncle would answer her question together some day, if they came from hell to do it.We laughed at his words, but the lady fainted at his looks, and we had a scene of hysterics and hartshorn in consequence.Any other man would have been kicked out of the room for nearly frightening a pretty woman to death in that way; but 'Mad Monkton,' as we have christened him, is a privileged lunatic in Neapolitan society, because he is English, good-looking, and worth thirty thousand a year.He goes out everywhere under the impression that he may meet with somebody who has been let into the secret of the place where the mysterious duel was fought.If you are introduced to him he is sure to ask you whether you know anything about it; but beware of following up the subject after you have answered him, unless you want to make sure that he is out of his senses.In that case, only talk of his uncle, and the result will rather more than satisfy you."A day or two after this conversation with my friend the _attache,_ I met Monkton at an evening party.
The moment he heard my name mentioned, his face flushed up; he drew me away into a corner, and referring to his cool reception of my advance years ago toward making his acquaintance, asked my pardon for what he termed his inexcusable ingratitude with an earnestness and an agitation which utterly astonished me.His next proceeding was to question me, as my friend had said he would, about the place of the mysterious duel.
An extraordinary change came over him while he interrogated me on this point.Instead of looking into my face as they had looked hitherto, his eyes wandered away, and fixed themselves intensely, almost fiercely, either on the perfectly empty wall at our side, or on the vacant space between the wall and ourselves, it was impossible to say which.I had come to Naples from Spain by sea, and briefly told him so, as the best way of satisfying him that Icould not assist his inquiries.He pursued them no further; and, mindful of my friend's warning, I took care to lead the conversation to general topics.He looked back at me directly, and, as long as we stood in our corner, his eyes never wandered away again to the empty wall or the vacant space at our side.
Though more ready to listen than to speak, his conversation, when he did talk, had no trace of anything the least like insanity about it.He had evidently read, not generally only, but deeply as well, and could apply his reading with singular felicity to the illustration of almost any subject under discussion, neither obtruding his knowledge absurdly, nor concealing it affectedly.
