So she was carrying it off, and her smile only a little self-conscious, only a shade embarrassed, when from among the men standing near the library door, for which she was directly making, there stepped out one to meet her, not unlike a slender needle darting toward a rounded magnet as it comes into due range. More sensitive than she, feeling the situation much more uncomfortably for his countrywoman than she felt it for herself, a foreign-looking fellow, who had not quite forgotten that he was an American, after a moment's hard struggle against his impulse hastened forward to shorten for her that uncompanioned course across the floor under ten thousand search-lights. "I'm looking for somebody," said Mrs. Hawthorne, with the smile of a child.. The voice which had made one man think of the crimson heart on a valentine reminded this other of rough velvet. He showed his eccentric three front teeth in a responding smile that had a touch of the faun, and asked whimsically: "Will I do?" "Help me to find Mr. Foss, and you '11 do perfectly," she said merrily. "I have n't seen him more than just to shake hands this whole evening, and I do want to have a little talk before I go." "If I am not mistaken, we shall find him in the library." He offered his arm. "I may have appeared to be doing something else, Mrs. Hawthorne, but I have really been looking for you the last hour," said the consul when he had been found. "I wanted to have a little talk. How are you enjoying Florence?" "Oh, we 're having an elegant time, thanks to that dear wife of yours and that dear girl, Leslie. I don't know what we should have done without them and you." "But the city itself, Florence, does n't it enchant you?" no. "We-ell, yes. N-n-n-no. Yes and That's it. You want me to tell the truth, don't you? Some of it does, and some of it does n't. Some of it, I guess, will take me a long time to get used to. It's terribly different from what we ex "Mrs. Hawthorne, hear me prophesy," said Mr. Foss. "In six months you will love it all. It 's the fate of us who come here from new countries. It will steal in upon you, grow upon you, beset and besot you, till you like no other place in the world so well." "Will it? Well, if you say so. The judge the friend I was speaking ofsaid so much of the same kind that the minute I thought of coming to Europe, right after I'd said, 'I'll go to Paris.' I said to myself, 'I'll go to Florence.'' "Mrs. Hawthorne, we must take you in hand. Be it ours to initiate you. Come, what have you been to see?" "Treasures of art? We have n't had time yet. We 've been getting a house fit to live in. When you asked me how I liked Florence, I ought to have begun by that end. I love my house, Mr. Foss. I love my garden. I love the Lungarno. And the Casheeny. And Boboly. And the drive up here. And the stores! I positively dote on those little bits of stores on the jeweler's bridge." "Well, well, that 's quite enough to begin with." "Now that we 're going to have some time to spare, we mean to go sight-seeing like other folks." "How I wish, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, that I were not such a busy man! But-" Mr. Foss had a look of bright inspiration. -"should I on that account be dejected? Here is Mr. Fane-" He turned to Gerald, who, after bringing up Mrs. Hawthorne, had stood near, a silent third, waiting to act further as her escort by and by. Meanwhile he had been listening with a varied assortment of feelings and a boundless fatigue of spirit. "-Mr. Fane," said the consul, "who is not nearly so busy a man as I, and is the most sympathetic, well-informed cicerone you could find. When we wish to be sure our visiting friends shall see Florence under the best possible circumstances, we turn them over to Mr. Fane." Gerald's face struggled into a sourish smile, and he bowed ironical thanks for the compliment. Lifting his head, he shot a glance of reproachful interrogation at the consul. Was his friend doing this humorously, to tease him, or was the man simply not thinking? The consul looked innocent of any sly intention; he was all of a jocund smile; the consul, who should have known better, wore the air of doing him a pleasure and her a pleasure and a pleasure to himself; the air of thinking that any normally constituted young man would be grateful for such a chance. "I shall be most happy," said Gerald, with irreproachable and misleading polite ness. Mrs. Hawthorne turned to him readily. "Any time you say. Let me tell you where we live." CHAPTER IV THE room in which Mrs. Hawthorne went to bed an hour or two after taking leave of the dwindling company at Villa Foss was large and luxurious. Its windows were enormous, arched at the top and reaching the floor. A wrought-iron railing outside made them safe. In the angle of the wall between two of them-it was a corner room-stood a mirror nearly the size of the windows, in a broad frame of carved and gilt wood, resting on a marble shelf that supported besides two alabaster vases holding bunches of roses. In the corner opposite to the mirror and placed "catty-corner," as the occupier worded it, stood the stateliest of beds, upholstered and draped in heavy watered silk of a dull, even dingy, yellow. Its hangings were gathered at the top into. the hollow of a great gold coronet, whence they spread and fell in folds that were looped back with silk cords. The walls were covered by that same texture of dull gold, held in place by tarnished gilt mouldings. Mrs. Hawthorne had wanted all this dusty and faded splendor removed,-it seemed to her the possible lurking-place of mice or worse, but the agent would not hear of it. The noble landlord was not really eager to let. So Mrs. Hawthorne, to brighten the room despite it, for she wished to keep it for her own, having taken a fancy to the fresco overhead,-that fascinating chariot driven among clouds by a radiant youth surrounded by smiling, flower-scattering maidens, - Mrs. Hawthorne to "gay up" the room, as she said, had hung windows. and doors with draperies of her favorite corn-flower blue, and covered the chairs with the same. On the floor she had stretched a pearl-gray carpet all aglow with wreaths of roses tied with ribbons of blue; and over the carpet-at the bedside, before the dressing-table, in front of the fireplace-laid down white bearskins. To cover further the yellow silk, she had hung in one panel of it a painting of the "Madonna della Seggiola," in another, Carlo Dolci's "Angel of the Annunciation," and in another, Carlo Dolci's Magdalen clasping the box of ointmentall works of art bought in Via dei Fossi, in great gilt-wood frames, like the mirror. There was just one thing in all the room that looked poor, workaday. It was on the small table at the head of the bed, beside the candlestick and match-safe, a black book, the commonest kind of Bible, such a Bible as is dispensed by those who have to furnish the sacred writings in large numbers-Sunday-schools, for in stance. It was in fact a Sunday-school prize that now lay on the night-stand, in what the sober volume presented to a pious little girl must have thought strange company. Cover to cover with it, cheek by jowl, lay a book on etiquette. It was for the Bible, however, that Mrs. Hawthorne reached after she had got into bed. She found her place. She read in it every night before sleeping, to keep a promise made long ago, and avoid evening, I wanted so to be dancing with the rest. Where d' you learn?" "I went to dancing-school, my dear." "No! Did you?" "Yes, I did; all one winter. What are you thinking about? I've been to parties in my life. Not many, but I 've been. There was the Home Club party—” "Yes, of course. I remember how I teased once to go to the Home Club party; but ma would n't let me. I had n't anything to put on, anyhow. To think I've always yearned so to have a good time, and now I'm having it! O Hat, was n't it lovely! That's a mighty nice house of the Fosses'. How good it looked, all fixed up! The flowers and candles, one room opening into the other, everything just right. Hat, Mrs. Foss is the finest woman I ever knew, and in my opinion makes the most elegant appearance. She's the one I'd choose to be like if I could. Just watch me copy-cat her. You'll see. 'My dear Mrs. Hawthorne, pray don't speak of the trouble! It's been nothing but a pleasure. Be sure you call upon us whenever we can be of the smallest service.'” "You've caught her, Nell, you silly thing. Down to the ground." "I'm going to pattern after her till it comes natural. How sweet they all are! How kind they 've been!" Mrs. Hawthorne grew dreamy. "Your dress, Nell, was a perfect success," the other ran on-"perfect. How did you think mine looked? I'll tell you a compliment I got for you, if you 'll tell me one you got for me. If not, I'll save it up in my secret breast till you 're ready to make a trade." "To think," said Mrs. Hawthorne, still engrossed by her dream of absent and bygone things, "that we 're the same little girls-and one of them barefoot!-who used to play house together on Cape Cod, and pin on any old rag that would tail along the ground, and play ladies!" "Nell-I'm so afraid of forgetting and calling you Nell that every time I catch myself near doing it I can feel the cold sweat break out on my brow." "What would it matter? We are n't impostors, Hat. We 're just having fun, and don't want our real names to queer it. If they should slip out when we are n't thinking, they 'd simply sound like nicknames we've got for each other. But they won't slip out. I'm too fond of calling you Estelle. Don't you love to call me Aurora? Hat, how did I behave, far as you could see?" "Nell, if I had n't known you, and had just been seeing you for the first time, I should have said to myself: 'What a fine, good-looking, beautifully dressed, refined, and ladylike woman that is! Wish t' I might make her acquaintance.' And what would you have said, if you 'd seen me, never having met me before?" "I should have said: 'What a bright, smart, intelligent, and rarely beautiful girl! So well dressed, too, and slender as a worm! A queen of society. I do like her looks! She 's the spittin' image of my little friend Hattie Carver, the schoolmarm in East Boston, that I used to know! Go ahead, Hat; what was it?" "Sure, now, you 've got one for me?" "Sure." "It was What 's-his-name, the English fellow we see every time we go in to Cook's Mr. Dysart. Leslie says he comes of a very good family. He said to me, 'How very charming Mrs. Hawthorne is looking this evening!'" "Hattie, that man 's a humbug, that man 's leading a double life. He said to me, 'How very charming Miss Madison is looking this evening!' He did." "Go 'way! You 're making it up." "No, I ain't! Stop, Hattie! I know: I am not. Confusion upon it! You 've made me so nervous when I talk that I can't say ain't without jumping as if I'd sat on a pin!" "Nell Goodwin, look me square in the eye. How many times did you say ain't at the party this evening?" "Not once; I swear it. I was looking out every minute. 'I am not,' I said; 'We are not,' I said; 'He does n't,' I said; 'He is n't,' I said. There! Between you 'n' I, Hat, it's a dreadful nuisance, keeping my mind on the way I talk. What's the matter with my natural way of talking?" "It 's all right at home, Nell, but it 's different over here. They 're a different kind of people we 're thrown with." "This pernickety way of talking never sounds cozy or friendly one bit. Oh, do you say so? 'Between you and I' is n't correct? But I thought you said-no, don't explain, not at this time of night, Estelle. You know all those sorts of things, my dear Estelle, because you 're paid by the Government to know them. I don't; but I know lots and lots of things that are a sight funnier." She grabbed one of the pillows and flung it at her friend, who flung it back at her; and the simple creatures laughed. Aurora re-tied in a bow the blue ribbon that closed the collar of her nightgown, and settled back again, with her arms out on the white satin quilt, flowered with roses and lined with blue. The two braids of her fair hair lay, one on each side, down her big, undisguised bosom. "You heaping dish of vanilla icecream !" said Hattie. "You stick of rhubarb!" said Nell. "Stop, Hat! Behave! Do you suppose all the people we 've invited to come and see us will come?" "Doctor Chandler will come. And the Hunt girls will come. And Madame Bentivoglio I guess will come." "Yes, and the Satterlees I'm sure will come. And Mrs. Seymour and her daughter that I said I 'd help with the church fair. And the minister-what was it?Spottiswood." "And won't the Mr. Hunt come that you were having such a good time with?" "Yes, he'll come. He'll come tomorrow, I should n't wonder. Then that thinnish fellow with the hair like a hearth-brush-did you meet him? Mr. Fane, a great friend of the Fosses. He's coming to take us sight-seeing." She yawned a wide, audible yawn. "I only hope there'll be some fun in it. Confound you, Hat, go to bed!" (To be continued) The Story of the Irish Rebellion By ST. JOHN G. ERVINE Author of "Mrs. Martin's Man," "Alice and the Family," etc. N Easter Sunday, after an absence. ON of several weeks, I returned to Dublin from England, and in the evening I walked down to the Abbey Theater to obtain my letters. There was an air of festival in the town, for the rigors of Lent were at an end, and people were making ready for such merriment as is possible in time of war to those whose men are in very present danger in Flanders and France; and as I crossed O'Connell Bridge and stood for a moment or two to look at the high reaches of golden sky which are everywhere visible in Dublin it seemed to me that the "peace which passeth all understanding" had settled on this old, distracted city. There had, indeed, been murmurs and mutter ings and marches of drilled men, and now and then one met an anxious official, full of foreboding, who spoke desperately of danger; but these were disregarded. One had stood on the pavement to watch the volunteers go by, and had treated them lightly. How could that tattered collection of youths and boys and hungry-looking laborers ever hope to stand against the British army! One saw them, on St. Patrick's day, marching up Westmoreland Street to College Green, some of them dressed in a green uniform that, except in color, was a replica of the khaki uniform of the British soldier. Most of them had no uniform, and their cheap, ready-made clothes had an extraordinarily unwarlike look |