'We have met with nothing like it in Italy,' they said; 'you may rely on our recommending you to all our friends.' On the day when Number Fourteen was again vacant, an English lady travelling alone with her maid arrived at the hotel, saw the room, and at once engaged it.
The lady was Mrs.Norbury.She had left Francis Westwick at Milan, occupied in negotiating for the appearance at his theatre of the new dancer at the Scala.

Not having heard to the contrary, Mrs.Norbury supposed that Arthur Barville and his wife had already arrived at Venice.

She was more interested in meeting the young married couple than in awaiting the result of the hard bargaining which delayed the engagement of the new dancer; and she volunteered to make her brother's apologies, if his theatrical business caused him to be late in keeping his appointment at the honeymoon festival.
Mrs.Norbury's experience of Number Fourteen differed entirely from her brother Henry's experience of the room.
Failing asleep as readily as usual, her repose was disturbed by a succession of frightful dreams; the central figure in every one of them being the figure of her dead brother, the first Lord Montbarry.

She saw him starving in a loathsome prison; she saw him pursued by assassins, and dying under their knives; she saw him drowning in immeasurable depths of dark water; she saw him in a bed on fire, burning to death in the flames; she saw him tempted by a shadowy creature to drink, and dying of the poisonous draught.

The reiterated horror of these dreams had such an effect on her that she rose with the dawn of day, afraid to trust herself again in bed.