Her good sense had been wanting on but a single occasion, that of her second marriage.

This occasion was certainly a momentous one, but these, by common consent, are not test cases.

A couple of years after her first husband's death, she had accepted the hand and the name of a Neapolitan music-master, ten years younger than herself, and with no fortune but his fiddle-bow.

The marriage was most unhappy, and the Maestro Grandoni was suspected of using the fiddle-bow as an instrument of conjugal correction.

He had finally run off with a prima donna assoluta, who, it was to be hoped, had given him a taste of the quality implied in her title.