A Carnival of Rome: In Two Parts. Part Ii

THE first day of the Carnival arrived. Masks, dominoes, and confetti were ready; a balcony on the Corso was hired and draped with scarlet by the invaluable Fortunate. Nobody thought of art or antiquities that day, neither were the horses ordered, but the young men came to the Tempietto and declared that it was a waste of life to stay in-doors in such weather. It was near the end of February; the sky was soft and cloudless, the air balmy, flowers were opening everywhere. The Saturnalia did not begin until two o’clock; where should they go? The Villa Medici was but five minutes’ stroll from their door; they would go there.

For those who do not know Rome, let us briefly say that this fifteenth-century palace is non the seat of the French Academy, where successful competitors for the Prix de Rome at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris are sent by their munificent government to study the fine arts in their chosen home. The building turns to the outer world, passing from the Trinità de’ Monti to the Pincio, a very plain stucco front, with a few large, bare windows, and a huge, open doorway, at which lolls forever a big, surly porter in livery. But a few yards farther there is a grated gateway in the blank, yellow wall; this the surly porter unlocked, and as it clanged behind the four they were on abroad, steep carriagedrive between two high walls of evergreen, confronted at some distance by a colossal stone female against a screen of soft gray, stained with mold and fringed by delicate little ferns and mosses. They turned into one of several wide alleys which cross each other at right angles between hedges of box as high and massive as defenses, under interlocking branches of evergreen oak which checkered the path with a close mosaic of orange-tawny sunshine and deep violet shadow. As their eyes roamed down these dusky vistas, beyond in the broad light were seen arches with statues, the marble basins of bright fountains, stone seats of classic form, pillars, pedestals, busts, fragments of antique sculpture, groups of dark-tressed maritime pine, clusters of vivid, early-blossoming shrubs. It always seemed to Rothenstein, as they emerged upon the magnificent front of the villa, — a triumph of elaborate symmetry and lavish decoration, the portico with superb columns and guardian lions, the rich frieze, bassi rilievi, medallions, garlands, niches, statues, enwreathed windows which look across the parterres, across the stone pines of the Villa Borghese, across the green and purple sweeps of the ever-changing Campagna, to the Sabine Hills, — as if this garden represented, above everything in Rome, the Renaissance, with its marriage of nature and culture, antique and modern art, Greece and Italy.

The open space on which the villa faces is bounded on the right, at the end opposite the tunneled evergreen walks, by a high ornamental wall, regularly divided by pilasters into arched recesses in which stand groups of statuary; a heavy balustrade along the top of it forms a terrace, over which are seen the twisted trunks and dense shade of an ilex wood with rank herbage at its roots, a dim, mysterious grove, like those in which the oracles spoke of old, growing here, high above the piazzas, the obelisks, the church - towers, the palace roofs of Rome.

The two girls sat down on a stone seat at the extremity of the flower - garden farthest from the villa, yet facing it, where just between a corner of the building and the neighboring foliage they could see the distant mass of St. Peter’s, surmounted by its cupola shining against the blue sky. The evergreen hedges, which were sending forth spicy odors under the potent sunshine, here mask the low parapet of a wall, a venerable wall, the wall of Rome, for this is the outer edge of the city. A tremendous plunge below is the narrow road, of which the eye takes no note unless looking directly downward; beyond is the beautiful, undulating, wooded domain of the Villa Borghese, and a little either way are ruins of mediæval fortifications matted with ivy and decked with wall-flowers; but the gaze does not rest on these, it flies with the wings of a dove to the mountains.

“ To be good is to he happy,” said Henrietta, leaning back against the elastic cushion of the hedge, as her glance wandered from St. Peter’s to remote Soracte. “ Never have I led such a sober, industrious life as in the past six weeks, — studying antiquity, mediævalism, history, art; riding, driving, visiting, hunting, dancing. The busy bee was a drone to me. And I never was so happy before; were you, Mal? ”

“ Never; I feel sometimes as if, come what may, I have had happiness enough for a life-time.” Her voice thrilled so deeply as she spoke that both the young men looked at her; she was conscious of it herself, and colored.

“ And do you remember when we thought that we could never be happy again ? How long ago that seems, yet it was only three years,” continued Henrietta.

“ When was that? ” asked Carey, smiling.

“ After some of our defeats,” said Henrietta, sighing unconsciously at the recollection. “What bad times those were! Do you remember, Marion, how you wanted to go to a hospital and nurse the soldiers, and how you cried yourself ill because your father would not let you? ” Marion nodded; her cousin looked at her with a sudden and tender expression of interest in his eyes. “ And so instead we went to the sanitary rooms, and sewed until our forefingers were rough.”

Marion rose carelessly and went over to the nearest fountain, where she sat down on the edge and dipped her hand into the water and tried to drink. Roger followed her; he saw that there were tears in her eyes.

Does it make you so unhappy still ? ” he said, gently.

“ Oh no! I am perfectly happy, — too happy ; it seems almost wrong, when there are so many who can never be happy again.”

“You didn’t know, I suppose, how much I wished to come home and go into the army? It was after poor Duncan was shot. My mother would not hear of it, nor my father, either. I thought I could n’t stand it; in fact, I should have run off and sailed for home and gone in as a private, if it had n’t been for Rudolf there. I sometimes think I have lost my chance in life because I did n’t do my share then.”

“ Yes, I heard them talk it over at home. It must have been very hard. I used to wish I were a man.”

“ It was bitter; it was unjust! ”

“ No, Roger, that is what I used to think about the hospital, but I see now that there were plenty to do the work then, fighting and nursing both; we are to wait for the due time, for our own call.”

“Yes,” said her cousin, who had already ceased to think about her, “that is very well for a woman, whose work is always waiting, I suppose; but it is not twice in a life a man has a chance for heroic duty.”

“Don’t you think so?” she replied, looking up at him.

“No; how should he in these days? ”

“Not in moral warfare? not in selfsacrifice? in resisting temptation? ” she said, forgetting herself in her earnestness.

His interest was again aroused; he looked at her thoughtfully. “ I did not know you were so good, Marion.”

“ Why, it is n’t good merely to know that,” she answered, with a mixture of embarrassment and indignation, and got up to go back to the others. As she crossed the opening of one of the alleys there suddenly flashed into sight two splendid creatures all clad in scarlet and gold and white and crimson, moving through the dark green gloom. They were models coming to sit to some of the painters of the Academy, tricked out in their gala dress and all their trinkets; one carried a tambourine; they walked with a free and stately step, the sunlight sifting through the close canopy upon their lustrous black hair and warm brown necks. “ Oh come! look! ” she cried to her companions. They all ran to where she stood, and broke into exclamations of delight. The superb young girls came on, unconscious as savage queens, their white teeth and dark eyes gleaming as they spoke to one another. They were passing the strangers with a courteous smiling salutation, but Henrietta stopped them, and after some talk learned where they were going, and that they had been dancing on the landingplaces of the Sealinata, a custom with them in Carnival time, and at no other. The young lady eagerly begged them to dance again, and they smilingly complied. One shook and beat the tambourine, the other set her arms akimbo, and both began a rapid, circling dance, full of steps and springs and clapping of hands to the oddly marked threefour time of the humming, jingling instrument, which accentuated the rhythm so well. “ Ah, brava! bella! benedetta! ” cried a voice behind the spectators, and turning round they saw Madame Rocca Diavolo approaching. She was in ecstasies with the brilliant group framed by the dark bower, for they had retreated within the margin of the shade to dance. She took the tambourine and beat it herself for them, knowing the measure well, that they both might have their arms to fling and toss, and animated them with cries of applause. As usual, she was dressed in dark colors and shrouded in lace, and as Roger looked at her elastic figure bending and swaying as she beat the tambourine, and her refined, patrician face in contrast to their more rustic beauty, he thought her not the least picturesque of the trio. When the contadinas stopped, breathless, she took out a paper of chocolate which she divided between them with many thanks and praises. They kissed her hand, bowed and smiled, and said “ A rivederci” to the foreigners; then passed on their way.

“ What a fortunate encounter! ” said the marchesa. “ I came to pay a visit to the director, but they tell the at the villa that he is at his studio; so, as we are great friends, I am going to stir him up in his den. Come, you shall go with me.” They hesitated to invade his retirement in such numbers, but the marchesa had no scruples; she led the way down one of the walks to a little mildewed pavilion, of which several are to be seen within the precincts, half hidden by branches, and rapped boldly at the door. The director was so glad to see her that he was glad to see whoever came with her. He had a great reputation in Paris, and the young men were curious to see some of his paintings in the half-finished condition which is often so much more striking than completed work. Marion’s attention was soon fixed by a small picture, finished and framed; it represented a woman leaning over a wall under some beech - trees. There was but a Little bit of wall, then her slight figure, one or two great boles with slenderer stems between, as beeches grow when left to themselves, no middle distance nor background; it was a mere corner; there were a few glimpses of pale, November sunset sky through the branches; yellow-brown leaves were floating from the gray boughs and bestrewing the ground. The woman’s dress was black, her clasped hands rested on the coping, her pale profile wore the anxious look of expectation which forecasts disappointment. The picture was all grays, browns, and blacks, yet it was not cold, only sad. It was a very clever painting to the eyes of a connoisseur; the low tones were marvelously harmonized. To the uninitiated it was full of sentiment and suggestion; it told a pathetic, a quietly tragic tale. Henrietta came up to Marion.

“ Do you see how much it looks like Beechy Heights ? ” said the latter.

“Yes; just like that far end of the place which overlooks the road. Come here,Mr. Carey; what does that remind you of? ”

Roger looked but could not remember; they told him and then he recognized it. “ I recollect now. It was a long way from the house; Ned and I used to get over and drop down into the road there when we were on larks. I hope I shall see it again some day, — and you standing there looking out for me, Marion,” he added gayly. The marchesa now joined them.

“ What are you looking at, my children? ”

“ At a little picture I call L’Attente,” said the painter.

“ You should not call it L’Attente,” she replied, “ but Aspettare non venire. ” He smiled like one whose thought is answered.

“Isn’t that an Italian proverb?” asked Henrietta.

responded the marchesa. Henrietta translated for the rest: “ To wait for one who comes not, to lie in bed and sleep not, to serve well without pleasing, are three things to die of.”

“ What a sad picture!” said Marion, strongly impressed; “ won’t you say the Italian again ? ”

The marchesa repeated it, in her strange, reverberating voice: “ Son tre cose per morire,” she said twice, slowly. Roger had never thought her so handsome, so interesting, so magnetic; what changeful moods! half an hour before, she had been beating the tambourine with the models and almost dancing with them; he wondered how many of the stories about her were true, and which was her real story; he should like to hear it from herself. Henrietta suddenly called them all to order by announcing that it was one o’clock; they would have barely time to lunch, don their dominoes, and reach the Corso, before the great bell of the Capitol would sound the opening of Carnival. They hurried away. The marchesa’s carriage was at the gate; she begged them to let her drive them home. It was but a step, and they would not hear of it.

“ Then let me drop these gentlemen at their hotel; your time is short; it will save some minutes.” Rothenstein declined; he thought it would be nearer to go by the Trinità and the Scalinata. Roger looked one moment at the starry eyes and sweet smile of the dark face in the carriage, and then sprang in; they drove rapidly off down the steep grades of the Pincio.

One afternoon of the Corso in the carriage was enough for the girls. It was more fun, perhaps, but they were so unmercifully powdered and pelted with confetti; so thumped and thwacked by the big bonbons, which are seldom anything but sweetened paste, by the horrible bouquets of rusty camellias and bachelor’s buttons set in prickly green which do duty a hundred times a day, flung from hand to hand; so beset by masks who climbed upon the back, box, and steps of their carriage to shower confetti and compliments and ask a thousand times with affected solicitude for their health, their family, and amusement, to the especial annoyance of Mrs. Mason, that after the first experiment they were satisfied to remain in the balcony.

Here, somewhat sheltered, they could watch the fantastic crowd surge by in their inexhaustible good spirits and good humor, frolicsome as children, but unlike children never tired or cross, their antics never degenerating into rudeness or coarseness. They seemed to be all born rope-dancers, they were so agile; leaping, bounding, ducking, and dodging, amid an incessant hail of missiles small and large. So many little bunches of violets, so many rosebuds, flew into their balcony with unerring aim, they fished up so many pretty bonbons and emblems with the long ribbons they had tied to their parasols, that Henrietta confided her belief to Marion that their masks and dominoes did not disguise them from the practiced eyes of their Roman friends. She did not suspect what a good thing Fortunato had made of it by betraying the number of their balcony. As to Marion, she could not get rid of the fancy that everybody’s face was like his mask, and under the painted pasteboard wore the same grin, frown, stare, or simper; that the men with birds’ and beasts’ heads really had muzzles or beaks, so that the Corso appeared to her as if Æsop’s fables had come to life under her eyes. It gave her the sensation of being in an absurd dream. “ I feel like Alice in Wonderland,” she said.

It is not “ high jinks ” all day or every day even in Carnival time. The sport goes on only in the afternoon four days in the week; Wednesday and Friday are dies non, besides the little-respected Sabbath. The young people of the Tempietto decided that it should be all holiday for them. They had finished their systematic sight-seeing, and now even Count Rothenstein was content to be idle, to go whither the humor might lead, to look only at what they liked; and this is the joy of Rome, where climate, sky, earth, the smile of nature, the sympathetic laziness of man, all bid one lounge, dream, be aimless, enjoy. The approach of the tableaux at the Prussian legation, however, did not leave them altogether to themselves. The representation had been fixed for the last night of Carnival, and there were rehearsals, consultations, final agonies about the costumes, which would force the girls to send away their faithful cavaliers disappointed of a ride or a drive; the young men’s engagements multiplied too, especially Roger’s, so that they sometimes did not meet for a couple of days.

The last day of the Carnival is the only one on which the masquerade is allowed to go on after sunset; on Shrove Tuesday an hour or two of dark is given to the moccoli, the universal blowing out and lighting of little tapers which everybody carries, the maddest sport, the prettiest scene, of the festival. The whole winds up with the veglione or great public masked ball at one of the theatres, to which all the merry-makers carry their wrought-up spirits as to a grand final bonfire of fun and nonsense. Henrietta had with difficulty persuaded her parents to take herself and Marion, and they were to go after the tableaux, for the veglione (literally, great vigil) is hardly in force until midnight. Marion had besought Madame di Rocca Diavolo to let her hear the air from the Fall of Troy which she was to sing for Cassandra, and the marchesa had appointed that afternoon, as they both seemed to have their hands too full on any other day. Marion would rather she should have named any other time. That afternoon had been fixed for a last ride; there was to be a hunt on Thursday, which would carry off. her cousin and Henrietta, and their friends were to start for Naples on Friday or Saturday. She could not allege this as an excuse to the marchesa, after so often begging to be allowed to come, but she was very loath indeed to give up the engagement. During the morning she was forced to go down to the Piazza di Spagna for half an hour’s shopping, and as she came slowly up the Spanish stairs on her way back, amid the little crowd which was watching the models dance, she longed for a sight of the Campagna and a breath of tramontana from the snowcapped mountains, before the ordeal of the evening. Although the Carnival is confined to the Corso, on the last day it begins covertly long before noon, and spreads through the neighboring streets; one meets masks and their capers at every corner, and Marion in her languid mood began to think that she had had enough of it. As she reëntered their apartment Henrietta looked up from her ribbons and lace and said, “ A change of programme, Mal: just after you went out, Count Rothenstein called to say that your cousin can’t ride this afternoon; and as you can’t go, you know, nor papa, mamma did not wish me to go; so the horses are countermanded, and I think it’s quite as well. When do you go to the marchesa? ”

“ At four. ”

“ Well, mamma and I are going for a turn in the Villa Pamfili, and she said we could take you there first.”

But about three o’clock came a hurried note from the marchesa, saying that she was not well; she had had an attack of the heart, — an old trouble,— that morning, and the doctor had ordered her peremptorily to keep her room and see no one for the rest of the day, in view of the exertions of the evening. Likewise at four o’clock, when the carriage came, Mrs. Mason feared that the moccoli, tableaux, and veglione would be too much for her if she were not quiet until evening, so the girls set out alone. Henrietta proposed that they should go to a villa whither they had once found their way three months before, and had always meant to go again. It was about half an hour’s drive. A narrow lane turned off from the main road between banks purple with great fragrant violets, surmounted by the slight lattice of cane which often does service for a fence in Italy, and here filled the gaps of a straggling bushy hedge which was breaking into little green leaves and almond-scented white blossoms. Half a mile of this, between vineyards, led to a large architectural gateway such as may be seen everywhere near Rome, — an arch surmounted with scroll work and a coat of arms in stone, a grated door, through which was visible a long arcade of dark verdure ending in a great white vase of classic proportions, and in the background, as through a vaulted window of foliage, the many-colored, sun-bathed Campagna. It was the unutterable promise of this glimpse which had first tempted the girls to seek admittance. The rusty bell - handle woke a long, shrill ringing, which brought out a beggarlylooking beauty, who, after eying them through the bars with a harsh “ Chi é ?” recognized them and opened with many smiles. She had thought that they would not come again, — that they had forgotten the Villa Rosalba. Would they have some new milk, as before, and some flowers? The lingering autumn roses of December were gone, but in the tangled garden borders before the deserted and dilapidated casino were thickly blossomed stems of rich yellow-brown wallflowers, filling the air with their delicious odor, stocks and gillyflowers, tufts of heart’s-ease, some shrinking lilies of the valley. Against a hot south wall a few orange-trees were sunning their golden balls, sheltered from the western tramontana by a group of sombre cypresses, which towered above a dark, shining mass of myrtles and laurustinums covered with ivory - white clusters. The contadina followed them, full of news. Her husband and children had gone in to see the last of the Carnival; poor she, Heaven help her! must stay at home and keep the house; but the Madonna had sent her much pleasure that day: the signorine whom she had thought about so often, and two masks from the Corso in beautiful dominoes, who had spent all the early afternoon in the garden. “ What could have brought them here? ”

“ To get flowers, perhaps,” said Henrietta.

“No doubt the signorina is right,” assented the woman, like all Italians of her class when they differ from you. “ Però — chi sa? some pazzeria di carnovale more likely.”

“ A gentleman and lady, I suppose? ”

“Yes, — or two gentlemen; I don’t know too well,” said the woman, with a shrug. “ They were both dressed as Don Pirloncino, so the saints in heaven alone can tell. But it was very allegro for me to see them there walking among the laurels.”

She chatted on about the masks until, with true Italian tact, she saw that they had no interest in the topic, when she dropped it and returned to her dirty little house by the gate, to milk the unfortunate animal which stood on tap there. The girls wandered down a long, broad gravel walk, bordered by laurel hedges which shut out everything but the divine sky, leading to a little bower where the laurel-trees had been allowed to grow together overhead. Here was the moss-lined basin of an empty fountain, that still gathered moisture enough from rain and dew to foster a tender fringe of maiden-hair and tiny ferns; a semicircular stone seat showed that this had been a retreat from the sun of summers long past. The ground beyond fell off abruptly; they were at the edge of a sort of bluff, and between the close branches and the cool, polished greenery they could see the glowing Campagna rolling in long, solitary sweeps towards the dreamy sapphire mountains, a single square tower standing up, vermilion in the afternoon light. The laurel leaves whispered and pattered; at intervals a low, prolonged soughing, like the distant breaking of a summer sea, came to them from the cypresses; high in air a chorus of unseen larks were twittering, and the warbling of a host of other birds filled the surrounding shade. Amid all this melody there could not be silence, but a stillness, oh how sweet and deep!

The girls sat without speaking, lost to all sense of time, until Henrietta exclaimed, “Why, look there!” so suddenly that Marion started. “ Look at that! ” and she pointed to the ground with her parasol. Marion looked down expecting to see a snake or a scorpion, — they had long ago made acquaintance with the harmless little lizards, — but she saw, traced in the soft, sandy soil, a number of letters twisted together as if somebody had been writing with the point of a stick; there were her own initials and Henrietta’s, her cousin’s in two or three combinations, and others partly effaced. She looked at her friend in amazement, but did not speak.

“Roger must have been here,” said Netta; “ you know'his trick — yes, there is the very monogram he made for my note-paper. How odd! When could he have come, that he did not tell us about it? ”

“ Perhaps we have not seen him since,” said Marion, who, without knowing why, was perturbed.

“ We saw him the day before yesterday, — but stop! there was a heavy rain that night; he must have been here since, or the marks would have been washed out. Perhaps he was one of the masks.”

“ it must have been he and Count Rothenstein.”

“ Yes, — what a good joke! how we will tease them! But why did they come in domino, do you suppose? ”

“ I don’t know,” said Marion in a faltering voice. Netta was silent for a few minutes, looking at the initials; she knit her brows and pressed her full under lip beyond the upper one ; at last she said, —

“ Perhaps they came yesterday, and the masks drove them out of the woman’s head; I ’ll ask her. There she is with the milk,” as a figure was seen in the distance at the other end of the laurel walk. She rose; Marion caught her arm.

“Don’t, dear, — don’t ask her anything, please.” Henrietta looked at her with a serious face.

“ No, darling, not if you don’t wish it. We ought to he going, I think; see how long the purple shadows are, out there on the uplands. Dear me, yes! six o’clock, and I want to gather some flowers.”

“ Go and get her to help you in the garden. I see some cyclamens in the field on the other side of the hedge they are the first I have seen; I can creep through, I think.”

Henrietta ran off to meet the contadina, and Marion pushed between the stems of the great laurels of the bower to a meadow, where, amid dark green, silver - spotted leaves, the pale pink, startled-looking flowers with ruby centres were lifting their delicate heads on long, slender stalks. It was early for them, and she did not find many; as she crept back she saw that she had dropped her handkerchief in getting through; she picked it up, but as she emerged, there lay her own beside her parasol on the seat. She examined the one in her hand: it was very fine; she shook it out of the folds, and in the corner was an embroidered coronet above the name Fiammetta. She stood a moment transfixed, then seized her things and ran wildly up the walk. Near the other end she met her friend coming for her. She flung herself upon her shoulder and moaned out, “ Oh, Netta, Netta! ”

“What is it, dear? darling Marion, what is it? what has happened? ” she replied, embracing her with all a young girl’s intense sympathy.

“ I can’t tell you,” said the girl between her sobs, true to a loyal impulse. “ But — but — it’s terrible! ”

Henrietta led her to the carriage, where the contadina had heaped the flowers and was waiting with the milk. Marion tried in vain to swallow; a convulsive gasp contracted her throat; Henrietta excused her kindly to the poor, wondering woman, who kissed their hands with fervent gratitude for the few lire which were to her a princely recompense. In a moment more they were on their way to Rome, Henrietta holding Marion’s hand and gazing with loving anxiety at the pale and closed eyelids with which her friend leaned back in the carriage. At length Marion opened them and sat upright.

“ Netta, I cannot tell you what is the matter, and it may be only my own — folly; I may be all wrong; but do not ask me any explanation, dear, and promise not to speak about those initials on the ground to anybody, nor to say where we have been this afternoon.”

They reached the Tempietto just as the cannon was fired for clearing the Corso before the horse-race, and found Mrs. Mason a little anxious lest they should not arrive in time. Marion’s head throbbed to such a degree that she could not go down to the balcony, and did not know how she was to get through the evening; and at her earnest entreaty Henrietta unwillingly went and left her alone. The exciting scene of the moccoli banished some of her painful preoccupation, and when she got back she found Marion perfectly quiet, though deathly pale and with traces of excessive crying, She tried to induce her to give up the tableaux, but Marion’s strong sense of obligation forbade her failing the baroness at the last moment, if fit to appear. By nine o’clock the redness had faded from her eyes, to be replaced by heavy dark rings, and there was no sign of anything but of the nervous headache, to which they agreed she had better own.

The assembly at the Palazzo Caffarelli was very brilliant, and the hostess in great force. She announced that she intended to give her guests a true German evening; but few knew what that portended. It opened with music, a quartette by Hummel, Baron von Stoekfisch himself playing the first violin. It was very well, very well indeed for amateurs; the Italians did not quite know what to make of it, but the baroness had long ago declared her intention of cultivating their taste for good music, so they listened with docility. Then followed a declamation by a stout, bald gentleman in spectacles, whose talents in this order were in high repute among his countrymen, and who, in compliment to the place, gave them neither more nor less than Schiller’s Huldigung der Künste (Homage to the Arts), of which long and beautiful poem the greater part of the audience unfortunately understood not a word, Next came Beethoven’s Sonata Pathétique, played in a masterly manner by a Russian lady; this, too, though sublime, is not short. After that, as a very special favor, a friend of the president of the Archæological Society, a well of learning, who happened to be in Rome for a day or two only, read them his celebrated dissertation on Pelasgic civilization, which had excited so much controversy between Tübingen and Göttingen; this also was in German. By this time various emotions were apparent among the company: the Italians gazed about with large eyes of wonder, and fine, discreet smiles; the French looked wicked, and as if a good many witty things would be said next day; the English women wore a sullen, Stolid aspect; the men were abominably bored, and said so aloud; the Americans tittered and whispered; the Germans were edified and beatified. The professor closed his discourse with the air of a man who has been throwing pearls before swine. At last, however, came the tableaux. Henrietta appeared in the first, and as the curtain rose, the stout gentleman in spectacles began reciting the scene from Molière, thus: —

The curtain rose and fell three times during the recitation; the French guests fairly writhed. During this performance a movement near one of the doors caused the baroness to turn round, and the Marchesa di Rocca Diavolo entered, nearly two hours late, as usual. She drew the hostess aside, and an energetic dialogue with much gesticulation on the marchesa’s part began. It afterwards came out that but for her vehement remonstrance, and positive refusal to sing if her advice were disregarded, a dramatic recitation would have accompanied every group. The baroness was as haughty and high-tempered as any Italian ever born; but she knew that she could not afford to quarrel with the marchesa, and with dull rage she abandoned this part of her programme. It was well, for otherwise the tableaux would have been spoiled, and they were really beautiful and most artistic in their arrangement. How the evening passed for Marion she did not know. With pulsing temples she listened intently to every note of the music, to every word of the harangues, as if she had to learn them by heart; from the room where the dram-atis personœ of the tableaux were waiting in their costumes, she could not see what was going on in the outer one, nor who was there. Her condition of mind had one advantage: all fear and flutter about appearing before an audience were forgotten. When her turn came, and the curtain rose, she was standing beside a statue of Apollo, with one hand resting on the pedestal and the other extended in a gesture of warning and appeal. Her attitude and drapery had been carefully arranged by a sculptor; but who had taught her the tragic expression, the prophetic glance, the imploring eyes, the mournful mouth? She stood there, a girlish figure to which the fine lines of the shoulders and arms, more developed than the rest of her person, gave a sort of youthful majesty; her eyes unnaturally large in their heavy circles, her low brow pallid and solemn under the wavy bands of her dark hair bound close by their classic fillet. At the same instant heavy minor chords rolled from the piano under the powerful touch of the Russian lady, and distinct from the surrounding crowd Marion saw the Marchesa di Rocca Diavolo standing beside the instrument, which faced the stage. She was dressed in violet velvet, with a cloud of black Spanish lace over her head, shoulders, and arms, and on her bosom a bouquet of cyclamens. She began the adjuration of Cassandra in low tones which seemed to curdle Marion’s blood; the warning accents rose higher, mingled with words of threat and supplication, with exclamations of despair at her own fate and passionate appeal to the deluded people who would not hear. She hardly seemed to sing; she declaimed; and yet the melody flowed on, with agonized discords in the accompaniment, and in the bass a dull, continuous crescendo movement like the distant march of doom. The hearers held their breath; some felt as if they were turning to stone; not a sound was heard but the ominous music in a silence such as might have fallen on the Babylonian feast when the handwriting appeared upon the wall. Three times the curtain rose and fell; three times Marion, with unwavering gaze “like a seer in a trance ” scanned the electrical face of the marchesa, illumined by excitement and genius, and beyond, in the shadow of a door-way, Roger Carey consuming her with his eyes. As the curtain dropped for the last time the music died hopelessly away. A storm of enthusiasm and applause such as is rarely heard even in a theatre broke from the audience, who had been in a state of tension very new to many of them. No comparison was worthy of the marchesa; Grisi, Pasta, Malibran, had never shown sueli inspiration! And where was the young American? her pose and expression had been perfect, worthy of Rachel or Ristori. They rushed into the other room and brought her out to share the triumph; in an instant she was face to face with the marchesa, the next she was in her arms. “Incomparable! How did you learn to look so, Marianna? You were my inspiration; I never sang so before.” As she kissed the girl she felt her shudder and recoil; she drew back in amazement. Marion’s eyes were closed, and she was holding out her hands helplessly as if for support; the marchesa gently pushed her back into an arm-chair and opened a little vinaigrette of very powerful essence. The faintness passed away instantly. Marion was urged to have air, to drink wine; to avoid causing more confusion she averred herself to be perfectly restored, and said she would sit there and see the rest of the tableaux. She was soon joined by Henrietta and all the others who were not to appear again.

All the groups were beautiful, but Cassandra was pronounced the success of the evening. By and by Roger Carey came and stood behind Marion’s chair; then she looked quickly round; Madame di Rocca Diavolo was gone. He began talking to Henrietta in an absent, preoccupied way.

“ Do you go on Friday or Saturday ? ” the latter asked presently.

“ I hardly know, — I may stay on a little while, perhaps until Easter; my plans are not settled.”

A few hours before she would have exclaimed with surprise and pleasure, but she was on her guard now, and on the lookout too, and made no comment; the cyclamens on the marchesa’s breast had given her the clew to Roger’s mysterious companion at the Villa Rosalba, but she was at a loss what to infer. When the tableaux were ended servants brought trays with light refreshment, and as it was already past midnight, a number of guests who were going to the veglione began to withdraw; the baroness in a commanding voice bade them remain, as she had still another surprise for them. Herr R——, the stout, spectacled gentleman, was to pronounce an epilogue written for the occasion. At this ensued what can only be termed a stampede, and the ambassador and ambassadress were left to enjoy the epilogue in the exclusive society of their own cultured country-people.

To Henrietta’s dismay Marion did not acquiesce in her affectionate suggestion that they should drop her at home on their way to the theatre; she expressed, on the contrary, a great desire to see the masked ball, and denied feeling tired or ill. Mr. Mason had prohibited masks, so they were to sit in a box, and change of dress was unnecessary. Of course this had not satisfied Henrietta, but she had been forced to compromise; now, rather worn by the evening’s excitement, worried and perplexed beyond words by the incidents of the day and her friend’s condition, she would have gladly given it up altogether. It was a glittering, dazzling sight, like a kaleidoscope of bits of humanity; all that was gayest and most fantastic in the Carnival was there in the body of the theatre. A great many masks accosted them, and Count Rothenstein came and laid aside his mask and domino and offered to take the young ladies about among the crowd. Henrietta went, but Marion remained in the box with Mr. and Mrs. Mason, unconscious of the music, the laughter, the shrill voices which almost deafened them, trying to recognize two figures among the mass which circulated, moved, and heaved under her eyes. All the stories which she had scorned as calumny now crowded upon her memory: one Roman nobleman drawn away from his wife, involved in political intrigues, languishing for ten years past in a state-prison nobody knew where, if indeed he were still alive; a young Austrian officer of high rank tempted by a rendezvous with the marchesa to break his parole when under arrest, discovered, degraded from the army, living under a feigned name at the head of a gambling-house in one of the Danubian principalities; another Italian, of the middle class, who for his great personal beauty and musical talent had been taken up and petted by the high Roman society, thrown off by the marchesa after she had compromised herself totally in the eyes of even her indulgent world by her intimacy with him, and who then, learning that the young girl to whom he had been affianced had lost her mind in consequence of his desertion, committed suicide; these horrible tales now rushed back upon her, together with the marchesa’s self-accusations. A thousand speculations chased each other through her mind. How long had this been going on ? Could they have been practicing a profound deception ever since their first meeting in January ? This seemed impossible; until the Carnival had begun, she could account for almost every moment of her cousin’s days and evenings; until the last fortnight they had scarcely been separated two hours of the waking day. Then her mind went back with a flash to the morning at the Villa Medici, and she felt certain that then had been the beginning. Even after that, though, they had been almost as much together as before; it was only very lately that he could have been often with the marchesa; but ah, she thought, if he were in love with her, how little time, weeks, days, mattered! This evening he had looked as if in that great room full of people, as if in the whole world, he saw no one else. And who could wonder? Had not Marion herself been wholly captivated by that fatal charm? But the sin of it — the wickedness! There was another question round which her mind revolved incessantly, yet which she could not bring herself to form into words: How far had it gon e ? All her maiden innocenee shrunk from the thought; but that afternoon she had felt herself face to face with something terrible, and she was like a child who instinctively creeps back to the door of the dark room which fills him with nameless horror.

Roger did not go near his friends during their stay at the ball, but was rushing in uncontrollable impatience and agitation from domino to domino, seeking one who was to give him a cyclamen in token of recognition. All the foreigners had been gone from the theatre for an hour, and the police were warning out a few lingering Italians, before Rothenstein could induce him to come away. The former had seen for some days that things were going wrong, and for the first time since he had known Roger there was not perfect confidence between them. They walked silently back to the hotel through the deserted streets, faint and distant echoes of expiring merriment reaching them in fragments from remote parts of the town. The sleepy porter who let them in pointed to the frame in which the lodgers’ names and numbers were inscribed, and Roger saw a note sticking in the rack opposite his. He snatched it down, but the lamp in the hall was too dim to read by, and he took his key and ran up-stairs, Rothenstein, whose room communicated, following gravely. Roger struck a light, tore open the envelope, and read a few lines in French: —

Midnight.

I cannot go to the veglione; my husband is called to Florence by telegram, and goes by the early train; I must stay and assist him to prepare his papers, for it is a lawsuit, and he will be gone a week, perhaps longer! Give up Naples, and to-morrow at one hour past noon be at the Porta San Sebastiano; I will come by in a carriage and take you up to Albano; you shall tell me whether you like best the Villa Rosalba or the Villa Crescenzi.

A rivederci, FIAMMETTA.

He sat down by the table, with his head on his arms, and felt his heart beat like the piston of a great engine, sending the blood in jets to his brain. In the lucid moments of the last twelve hours he had repeatedly asked himself what it was all coming to, and it had come to this. The unconfessed frenzy of his desires had been revealed to him with startling distinctness. For a brief hour he was swept away by a whirlwind of triumph and wild delight; it seemed as if the room could not contain him, as if he could not contain himself; he must rush to the San Sebastiano gate and not stir thence until the starry glance, the siren smile, should lighten upon him. He read the note again; something in it jarred upon him, and his delirium fell; but a little while before, his whole being had aspired towards this vision of air and fire; now he was conscious of some grosser element, which mingled smoke with the flame of his passion. Roger had never done anything in his life to blunt his sense of honor, or to lower himself in his own eyes, and his unperverted instincts recoiled from an intimation of debasement. Why, why had she made that mention of her husband’s absence? Why could she not have bidden him meet her and let the explanation follow ? That one sentence put everything in its true light, and left no room for delusion or self-deception, and he could not quell the faint disgust and sense of degradation it produced. Yet at the thought of her the madness merely to see her and hear her speak again surged up as if nothing could stand before it.

Through the rest of the night he fought his fight, and when day dawned the issue was still uncertain. He began to feel the weariness of prolonged excitement, and flung himself on his bed. His thoughts led him to the San Sebastiano gate and out along the Appian Way farther than he had ever gone, to where the blue escarpment of Monte Cavo overtops the mottled white patch on the hill-side which he had so often heard was Albano, most beautiful of mountain towns. He recalled his last drive along the Appian Way and how the delicious hours had flown, the languid smile of the sunlight on the hazy hills, the voluptuous melancholy of the Campagna, the witching grace of the enchantress beside him, who had pointed to that white, irregular outline and told him that she owned a villa there, and how exquisite the beauty and impenetrable the seclusion of the spot were. Then his thoughts went over every day he had spent in Rome, back to the first drive on the afternoon he had come, and the calm, ineffable rapture of the moment when he stood on the little mound and felt the loveliness of Italy enfold his soul. Suddenly a mighty revulsion took place within him. Go to Albano by that road which he had first trodden with those pure girls, and return to them from his intrigue when the marchese might be expected back from Florence? No! It was six o’clock, and the sun was already full on the yellow towers of the Trinità de’ Monti and the dark oaks of the Villa Medici. He went into his friend’s room; Rothenstein was fast asleep; he woke in surprise at a hand on his shoulder, and saw Roger, rather pale and haggard, at his bedside, saying, —

“ Wake up, old fellow, I want to talk to you.”

Notwithstanding the fatigue and late hours of the previous night, the ladies of the Tempietto were at the little English chapel just outside the Porta del Popolo in time for service on Ash Wednesday morning. When it was over, Mrs. Mason. said she would go home over the Pincian.

“I should like to take a longer walk,” said Marion. “Alone, dear,” she added in a whisper to Henrietta, who had turned to offer her companionship. So the mother and daughter strolled slowly up the terraces of the Monte Pincio, already bordered with hyacinths and lilies of the valley, while Marion took her way along the Via Babuino. But the day had changed; the sirocco or south wind was blowing, the sky was overcast, there was an ashen hue over everything which took the color out of even the models’ scarlet stripes, the atmosphere was oppressively close and lifeless. By the time she reached the Piazza di Spagna she found the little, irregular stones of the pavement so painful to her feet, her knees trembled and her head ached so much, that she called a legno and bade it drive her to the Palazzo Satanasso. The marchesa was not yet up, but a footman took Marion’s card, and the maid returned directly and carried her into the bed - chamber. The marchesa looked old, worn, sallow; her black hair, loose on the pillow in elf - locks, showed more gray than when it was rolled up, yet at her first smile Marion saw with terror how little her fascination depended on dress, freshness, youth, or even the remains of beauty which were often visible in so high a degree. The Italian saw, as her visitor crossed the threshold; that something was amiss, and intuitively knew in what quarter; yet she could hardly conceive how a breath of the affair could have reached Marion, for she was expert in mystery and fancied that this had been kept absolutely secret. The young girl looked so ill that she was shocked, and asked impulsively after her health.

“ Yesterday was too much for me,” said Marion, as she sat down at a little distance. “ I shall be well to-morrow. I have come to bring you back something of yours; I thought you might be uneasy when you knew you had lost it; no one has seen it but I; ” and she laid the handkerchief on the bed.

The marchesa took it with a look of perplexity. “ Where did you find it? ” she asked.

“ At the Villa Rosalba yesterday afternoon, under the seat in the laurel bower. ’ ’

“ And how did you know with whom I was there? ” she asked, sitting up and fixing her narrowing gaze on Marion, for she saw that she did know.

“ There were some initials scratched on the ground with a cane.” The marchesa burst into a fit of laughter and fell back among her pillows. If it had been any one else, Marion would have left the room indignantly; but she had worshiped this woman, and her heart was quivering with a double wound; the ringing laughter tingled along her nerves for a second, and then she burst into tears. The marchesa was kneeling beside her in an instant.

“ Poverina, care, Marianna mia!” she exclaimed, and even yet her voice soothed the poor child’s passion. “ Forgive me; don’t cry; I did not know you loved him. ”

Marion drew away with a proud movement, a pale red overspreading her wan face. She got up to go.

“ No, listen; sit down,” said the marchesa, shivering slightly and getting back into bed. “ No more harm can be done now, and I should like to tell you what has happened. Your cousin pleased me — yes, he has come three or four times lately to hear me sing, and we have had some drives. Yesterday morning we met by accident. He proposed that I should go with him to the Corso in the afternoon and mystify some of our friends, so we got the costumes; then, when we were in all the riot, I said, ‘ Oh for a breath of fresh air! ’ and we made our way out of the crowd and called a legno, and drove to that little place because it was near. We were not there two hours; we were gone by five; you must have come late. That is all.”

Marion looked at her without speaking. The marchesa had forgotten all about her illness and her doctor, and she could not remind her of it; indeed, the note might have been sent when they resolved to go to the Corso. But how much could she believe now? A sickening sensation passed over her, and she dropped her eyes. There was a silence.

The marchesa resumed, a little impatiently: “ We did not exchange a word at the Palazzo Caffarelli, as you may have seen, yourself; when I came home to get my mask and domino I found that the marchese had to go to Florence by the early train this morning, and I was up all night helping him to get ready; I was not at the veglione. So that is the end of it.”

“The end?” repeated Marion sorrowfully. “ Do you suppose that he does not love you —that he will not see you again? He is putting off his journey to Naples; I heard him say so last night; and I knew why.”

“But he has gone!” exclaimed the marchesa.

“Gone?” cried Marion with a pang of joy and grief.

“ Yes, here is his farewell note; it came an hour ago.” She took it from under her pillow and held it up.

“ Oh! ” sighed the young girl, clasping her hands, “ thank God ! ” She did not know how, when Roger was beginning note after note to Madame Rocca Diavolo until he almost lost the train, his courage more than once failing him between the strength of returning temptation and the sense of the sorry figure he should make to the marchesa, he had thought of Marion’s words in the Villa Medici on the day when that siren smile had first kindled his fancy, and how he knew then that, ridiculous as he might seem, there was heroism in this act. It was a very difficult note to write; what he said he hardly knew; perhaps it was the poorest attempt which he sent, after all; at any rate it was short, and it was farewell.

The ejaculation, for some reason, touched Fiamrnetta’s pride.

“ Listen to me, young girl. He has fled, it is true, but flight is not always safety. Absence is hard to bear at first; the thoughts turn backward, the heart whispers all that might have been; a letter almost draws one back; it is not far from Rome to Naples. Do you think I would let a man I loved escape me so? No; if he did not return, I would follow him.” Marion gave a gesture of fright and despair. “ But I do not love him; it was a caprice. He is gone; let him go. I had written,” and she drew a letter from a portfolio on a table beside her. “There! ” and she tossed it upon the brazier in the middle of the room; “ now that comedietta is finished.”

Marion felt the magnanimity of the action, despite the touch of scorn in the tone. “ Thank you,” she said. “ You are generous. I shall not be the gainer, but he will. God bless you! ” And so with quivering lips but without another word or look she left the presence of her shattered idol.

The Italian lay thinking it all over. It was the first time in her life that she had relinquished a victim, and at her age it was not so slight a thing as it would hare been twenty years earlier; but she had no vanity in her composition. If the demons of passion, rivalry, jealousy, had been roused in her heart, it might have fared ill with Marion, for when they were awake she had never yet hesitated for the sake of man or woman; but it had been a whim, a fancy, mid she had let it go. It was a new experience to stop half-way; she had acted on impulse, too; perhaps if she had waited three hours the letter might have gone. But she did not regret what she had done; she did regret the pain of the young girl to whom she had become attached, and with whom, she felt, all was over. She read poor Roger’s farewell lines again. “He did not love me either, not yet; but I think he will not forget me very soon,” she said to herself with some satisfaction. She took up the handkerchief, and thought of the dawning passion among the laurels. “ Pest! why did not the child tell me she loved him?” she said, and then flung note and handkerchief upon the brazier to mingle their ashes with the letter’s.

When Marion reached the Tempietto she found some of their American friends there, and all in a little commotion. On returning from church Mrs. Mason had received a note from Count Rothenstein, to tell her that in talking over their plans after the veglione they had determined to carry out their original project of going to Greece and Turkey, and on inquiry found that a steamer would leave Brindisi the following week, which gave them so little time at Naples that they were starting at once. It ended with many compliments and regrets, hopes to meet again, and a petition to be allowed to write on their journey. The lady who was to chaperon the party with which he was to have gone had also had a note from him, explaining their sudden departure and saying they would engage rooms, inquire about the expeditions to Amalfi and Pæstum, and have everything ready for their friends’ arrival.

“ It strikes me as odd that Mr. Carey did not write,” said Mrs. Mason.

“I suppose one packed and the other wrote; think how little time they had,” said Henrietta carelessly. “ I dare say we shall hear in a day or two.” But Marion saw that she was troubled; when they were alone, she said,—

“ Netta, you are sorry that they are gone.”

“ You couldn’t expect me to be glad, Mai, could you — after these two pleasant months we ’ve spent together? ”

“ You would n’t be sorry, dear, if you knew. I think Count Rothenstein saw that there was a great danger for Roger, and has persuaded him to go away.” The tears swelled under Henrietta’s lids, but she drove them back bravely, and nodded. Nobody but her friend saw that though her outer life continued the same, practical, unselfish, gay, she had little heart for pleasure or duty.

The marehesa knew what she was talking about when she said that absence is hard to bear at first; she had been right, too, in foreseeing that Roger would not soon forget her ; he was not likely ever to see a woman who would make him forget her, and for some time he dragged the fragment of a half - riveted chain. In one way she had done the best for him herself by her Carnival pranks. Under the fascination of her presence he did not perceive the impression produced upon him; if they had met at the masked ball, if he had been at the Porta San Sebastiano, no doubt all such recollections would have been lost in utter intoxication; but as the violent attraction passed off like the effect of a philter, he measured the abyss which separated her from any woman he could truly love. Yet neither of the young men could get rid of a restless longing to be back in Rome. They both missed the companionship of those two months inexpressibly; not even constant change of scene could accustom them to separation from the sweet habit of intimacy into which they had so easily fallen. Rothenstein’s regret was so enduring that Roger began to suspect that on the morning when he had thought himself making such a heroic effort, his friend had been the greater hero. They had both written to Mrs. Mason from Naples, and a joint letter to the young ladies; at Athens they had received an answer from Henrietta, who wrote for the whole party. They replied at once, and waited eagerly to hear again, but there were no more letters from Rome among their mails; still they continued to hope for them, and each disappointment was deeper than the last, until one evening on the Bosporus, when another steamer had come, bringing them nothing from the Tempietto, the German confessed that if he had counted the cost he could not have come away. An uncomfortable conscience, a vague uneasiness lest some hint of his affair with the marehesa should have transpired and that this was the cause of their silence, prevented Roger’s writing again, and the count did not venture to do so alone, not deeming his intimacy sufficient to warrant it.

It was June before they found themselves again in Italy. They reached Naples from Sicily in the night, and took the earliest train to Rome, unable to explain their own impatience. All along the route they saluted with joy sites which they had remarked when traveling the other way somewhat heavy-hearted. They talked over every incident of the winter as they had never done before; by tacit consent the marehesa had been rarely mentioned between them; Rothenstein had not known of the last day’s adventure, nor the contents of the last night’s note, but he had been aware of Roger’s mysterious comings and goings for a week previous, and guessed very nearly how the affair had gone. Now for the first time they spoke freely of the party at the Palazzo Caffarelli, and that magnificent performance which, often as they had heard Madame Rocca Diavolo sing before, had been a revelation to them.

“ She is surely a wonderful creature,” said Roger, closing his eyes and leaning back. “ One could not see so much beauty, genius, charm, grace, sweetness, and power of passion, without—without a sort of divine thirst, a longing to dissolve it all in one cup like Cleopatra’s pearl, and drain it at a draught.”

“Dregs, dregs,” replied the German. “ Think how often the cup had been emptied before.”

“ True,” said the other, with a halfsigh. “ That thought would have given it a hitter enough after-taste; if one loved her, it would be maddening. But I did not love her. I 'm glad to have known her, at all events; after being carried off one’s feet once like that, one feels steady enough for all time to come; I doubt if even she could turn my head again, and love — love is very different from that. Rudolf, it was the recollection of those two girls which made me break away just at the crisis. I thought myself as free to do as I liked as any man alive, but after all, one is never so free but that there is some one to whom one owes it not to do wrong.”

Rome was in her midsummer magnificence; the heat was great, but as yet nothing looked parched; veils of delicate verdure shrouded the sombre ilexes and cypresses, for thousands of deciduous trees, which are overlooked in winter amid the perennial foliage of the evergreens, were now in leaf everywhere; roses overspread the gardens and fell in cascades from the walls; silvery, plashing fountains were grateful to eye and ear. The deep, rich colors were gone from the landscape; the Campagna rolled in emerald billows to the base of the mountains, which were a faint lilac, and their little white towns twinkled through the hot haze. The foreigners had all left the city, which was not then the reviving capital of to-day, and had sunk back into Somnolence on their departure. Now and then a red coach crawled through the dark avenues of the Villa Borghese, beside a cardinal who had got out to stretch his purple legs over the grass, and this was all that remained of the gay winter procession; the models had vanished from the Spanish stairs, for their season too was over; the beggars sat in the shade instead of the sun. To the two young men there was an inexpressible sense of loneliness under all the beauty; it was pleasure and solace to be there again, but they now for the first time realized the sadness of Rome, of which they had heard so much.

It was late in the afternoon before they emerged from the hotel, refreshed from their hot and dusty journey, and turned their steps towards the Pincian to see the sunset. At the top of the Scalinata, Roger proposed that they should stop at the Tempietto for a last look at the rooms where they had spent so many happy hours. The woman in charge knew them well, for she had acted as housemaid to the Masons. They learned of her that their friends had been gone nearly two months: “ They went to Florence as soon as the Signorina Marianna could bear the journey.”

“ Good heavens! has she been ill?” cried Roger.

“ Oh, holy saints! does not the signore know? Very ill, ever since Carnival; the doctor said she took cold at the veglione, and that she neglected it and it ran into fever, a perniciosa. But I think she had a misfortune, some bad news that day, for she came in from driving with the Signorina Henrietta, pale, pale as the dead, and would not go to the moccoletti, but cried and sobbed as if her heart would break, all by herself in her room. Dio mio ! Susanna and I tried to make her drink tea, but she would have nothing. She kept up for a few days, — what courage ! what heart! — but then had to take to her bed. She was molto appassionato, about something; she used to cry a great deal when she was alone; Susanna sat in the next room to sew, and she could hear her. How my signorina nursed her, as if they had been sisters! Two angels, those young ladies. At last she got better and they took her away.”

“ Are they in Florence still, do you know? ”

“ Oh no! Fortunate wrote me a letter for Susanna, and my signora and her family were going to Venice and then to Switzerland; but the Signorina Marianna was sick for her country, and was to go home at once with some ladies, their friends.”

“ To go home! ” said Roger, with a cold shock of disappointment. “ How long ago was that ? ”

“ Oh, a month ago, I believe, and there is a letter which came for my signorina afterwards, and I did not know where to send it. Perhaps the signori will take it for me.”

“ But we do not know their address. Why did you not take it to the bankers’ ? ”

“ Ah, blessed Virgin! Poor fool that I am, I never thought of that.” She went to look for the letter, and the young men, miserable at this news, sat down in the deserted drawing-room. It was literally as the Masons had left it; the very candle-ends had not been removed; some withered flowers were crumbling in a vase; the secretary at which Henrietta used to write her notes was open, and beneath it the basket which her neatness had provided, half full of visiting-cards and envelopes torn across. The German looked round, and tears filled his candid blue eyes. Roger pulled out a drawer in which lay some loose sheets of Italian exercises in Marion’s bold, clear hand; he rolled them together tenderly to take them away with him. The woman returned with a soiled and crumpled envelope superscribed as often as if it had been forwarded from place to place round the world; Roger took it, and after a glance threw it to Rothenstein, who uttered a prolonged “ So! ” of vexation; it was their own letter from Athens. They questioned the woman further, hut she could tell them no more, and in a melancholy mood they left the house and walked towards the Pincio.

‘ ‘ What could have made Marion ill ? ” said Roger.

“ It was not the veglione; something had happened that day. Don’t you remember how she looked in the evening?”

“ But that was the music.”

“ Not at the first notes when the curtain rose. I saw her before the tableaux began ; Mrs. Mason sent me to the actors’ room with her daughter’s fan, which she had forgotten; Miss Sands was sitting apart like a statue of grief.”

“ There could have been no bad news from home, or they would have told us.”

“ No, there was no bad news. I spoke to Miss Mason at the veglione about her friend’s looks, and she said it was only a violent headache, but she was nervous and worried about her, I could see, and altogether unlike herself. No headache ever gave any one such an expression.”

“ How very strange!” said Roger, pondering; “ what could it have been? ”

“ To tell the truth, I have never been able to get it out of my head that she had found out something of your affair.”

“ I hope to God she had not! And what could she have heard? Yes, that afternoon, to be sure. Good heavens! could she have met and recognized us? Do you think she would have cared so much? ” he added, a thrill of pleasure mingling with his distress.

“ I don’t know what she may have heard or seen,” replied the other, gravely; “but I think any suspicion of such an affair would have shocked her deeply.”

“ It is inexplicable that Miss Mason did not write of her illness.”

He did not understand a young girl’s pride of sex; Henrietta had jealously guarded her friend’s sufferings from him whom she knew to be the cause.

They were walking slowly, for the heat was intense, and opposite the Villa Medici they sat down on the parapet of the terrace-wall, under the dense shade of some ilexes whose last year’s leaves were dropping into the brimming basin of a huge stone fountain - cup; the sinking sun was flooding the city with gold, the sublime cupola of St. Peter’s bulged, violet, against the rosy sky. Roger absently turned over the papers he held in his hand. On one of them some verses in pencil fixed his attention; they were in trembling characters only just to be recognized as his cousin’s; he held them nearer his eyes, and read: —

ASPETTARE NON VENIRE

Next morning the young men were on their way northward, Count Rothenstein to seek Henrietta through the world until he found her, Roger to sail for home and see whether Marion would be waiting for him by the wall at Beechy Heights.