The Last of the Mortimers

“It pleases to the Signora give me the Leezee?” said Domenico, with an insinuating look. “No? no? But what to have done? The Signora displeases herself of me? Wherefore? Because? I not know.”

“I am not displeased,” said I. “You are a very good fellow, Domenico, and have always been very kind. But she is a child; she is not seventeen. What would you do with her in a strange country? She is too young for you.”

“The Leezee contents herself,” said Domenico, with a broad smile opening out his black beard. “If it pleases to the Signora, I bring her back other times; I take the care of her; I make everything please to her. The Signora not wills to say no?”

And of course I did not say no; I had no right to say anything of the sort. And Lizzie actually was not afraid to marry that mountain of a man. She went away with him, looking dreadfully ashamed, and taking the most heartrending farewell of little Harry and me, Domenico looking on with great but smiling sympathy all the while, and not at all resenting her tears. But the Captain had come home, and little Harry had attained the independence of two and a half years. Lizzie felt she had discharged her trust, and was no longer imperatively needed to take care of me. I kissed her when she went away, as if she had been a sister of my own, and I confess was not ashamed to add a tear to the floods that poured from her brown eyes; but I am obliged to avow that it is not within the range of my powers to put correctly on paper all the long rolling syllables of her new name.

THE END

1

A Scotch expression which signifies burned in the pan.