Connections can take your business anywhere, so meet Meta and make new connections.

Meet engaged audiences and make lasting relationships.

Meet some of the world's best creators and delight your customers with Reels ads.

Meet powerful ways to sell, to help you grow your business.

Meet opportunity, meet Meta at emea.metaMarketingSummit.com

The fourth part, chapter 16.

It was only the 20th of September when Agnes and the children reached Paris.

Mrs. Norbury and her brother Francis had then already started on their journey to Italy,

at least three weeks before the date at which the new hotel was to open for the reception of travelers.

The person, answerable for this premature departure, was Francis Westwick.

Like his younger brother Henry, he had increased his pecunary resources by his own enterprise and ingenuity, with this difference.

That his speculations were connected with the arts.

He had made money in the first instance by a weekly newspaper, and he had then invested his profits in a London theater.

This latter enterprise, admirably conducted, had been rewarded by the public with steady and liberal encouragement.

Pondering over a new form of theatrical attraction for the coming winter season, Francis had determined to revive the language public taste for the ballet by means of an entertainment of his own invention, combining dramatic interest with dancing.

He was now, accordingly, in search of the best dancer, possessed of the indispensable personal attractions, who used to be found in the theaters of the continent.

Hearing from his foreign correspondence of two women who had made successful first appearances, one at Milan and one at Florence, he had arranged to visit those cities and to judge of the merits of the dancers for himself, before he joined the bride and bridegroom.

His widowed sister, having friends at Florence, whom she was anxious to see, readily accompanied him.

The Mount Berries remained at Paris, until it was time to present themselves at the family meeting in Venice.

Henry found them still in the French capital, when he arrived from London, on his way to the opening of the new hotel.

Against Lady Mount Berries' advice, he took the opportunity of renewing his addresses to Agnes. He could hardly have chosen a worse time for pleading his cause with her.

The gaities of Paris, quite incomprehensibly to herself, as well as to everyone about her, had a depressing effect on her spirits.

...