Sylvia had not the slightest backwardness about explaining.  In fact she always took the greatest pains to be explicit with old Mr. Sommerville about the pit from which she had been digged.  “Why, this visit to Aunt Victoria is like stepping into another world for me.  Everything is so different from my home-life.  I was just thinking, as I sat there behind all this glorious clutter,” she waved a slim hand over the silver and porcelain of the tea-table, “what a change it was from setting the table one’s self and washing up the dishes afterwards.  That’s what we always do at home.  I hated it and I said to Arnold, ‘I’ve reached Capua at last!’ and he said,” she stopped to laugh again, heartily, full-throated, the not-to-be-imitated laugh of genuine amusement, “he said, ‘Who is Capua, anyhow?’”

Mr. Sommerville laughed, but grudgingly, with an impatient shake of his white head and an uneasy look in his eyes.  For several reasons he did not like to hear Sylvia laugh at Arnold.  He distrusted a young lady with too keen a sense of humor, especially when it was directed towards the cultural deficiencies of a perfectly eligible young man.  To an old inhabitant of the world, with Mr. Sommerville’s views as to the ambitions of a moneyless young person, enjoying a single, brief fling in the world of young men with fortunes, it seemed certain that Sylvia’s lack of tactful reticence about Arnold’s ignorance could only be based on a feeling that Arnold’s fortune was not big enough.  She was simply, he thought with dismay, reserving her tact and reticence for a not-impossible bigger.  His apprehensions about the fate of a bigger of his acquaintance if its owner ever fell into the hands of this altogether too well-informed young person rose to a degree which almost induced him to cry out, “Really, you rapacious young creature, Arnold’s is all any girl need ask, ample, well-invested, solid....”  But instead he said, “Humph!  Rather a derogatory remark about your surroundings, eh?”

Arnold did not understand, did not even hear, leaning back, long, relaxed, apathetic, in his great wicker-chair and rolling a cigarette with a detached air, as though his hands were not a part of him.  But Sylvia heard, and understood, even to the hostility in the old gentleman’s well-bred voice.  “Being in Capua usually referring to the fact that the Carthaginians went to pieces that winter?” she asked.  “Oh yes, of course I know that.  Good gracious!  I was brought up on the idea of the dangers of being in Capua.  Perhaps that’s why I always thought it would be such fun to get there.”  She spoke rebelliously.

“They got everlastingly beaten by the Romans,” advanced Mr. Sommerville.

“Yes, but they had had one grand good time before!  The Romans couldn’t take that away from them!  I think the Carthaginians got the best of it!” Provocative, light-hearted malice was in her sparkling face.  She was thinking to herself with the reckless bravado of youth, “Well, since he insists, I’ll give him some ground for distrusting my character!”