The main facts of his story up to the morning of this day--this 13th day of February, 1857--may be told in a few lines.
He was the son of a wealthy Derbyshire squire, had taken honours at Cambridge, and had been called to the bar some four or five years back. As yet he could scarcely be said to have entered actively upon his professional life. He had written an able treatise on the law of International Copyright, and edited an important digest of Chancery practice. He had also been for years in the habit of contributing to the best periodical literature of the day. Within the last four months, after a prolonged opposition on the part of her nearest relatives, he had happily married a young lady of ancient Roman Catholic family and moderate fortune, to whom he had been attached from boyhood. They were spending a long honeymoon in Rome, and were perfectly happy as a pair of lovers in a fairy tale. When it is added that she was just twenty-two and he thirty-four years of age, the outline of their little history is made out with sufficient clearness for all the purposes of this narrative.
Pushing on, then, at his eager pace, Hugh Girdlestone came presently to the post-office and inquired for his letters. There was but one--a square, blue-looking, ill-favoured sort of document, sealed with a big office seal and addressed in a trim business hand. He had to show his passport before the clerk would trust it beyond the bars of the little cage in which he sat, and then it was overweight, and he was called upon to pay forty-six bajocchi for extra postage. This done--and it seemed to him that the clerk was wilfully and maliciously slow about it--Hugh Girdlestone crushed the letter into an inner breast-pocket, and turned away. At the door he hesitated, looked at his watch, crossed over, withdrew into the shade of a neighbouring _porte-cochère_, took his letter out again, and tore it open.
It contained two enclosures; the one a note from his publishers, the other a letter of credit upon a great Roman banking-house. He drew a deep breath of satisfaction. He had been expecting this remittance for several days past, not altogether with anxiety, for he was in no immediate need of money, but with some degree of impatience; for the fate of more than one project was involved in the sum which this letter of credit might chance to represent. The extension of their tour as far as Naples, the purchase of certain bronzes and cameos, and the date of their return to England, were all dependent upon it. It was no wonder, then, that Hugh Girdlestone's brow cleared at sight of the amount for which he found himself entitled to draw upon the princely establishment in the Piazza Venezia. It exceeded his expectations by nearly one-half, and made him a rich man for the next three months.