“Dear me,” I said, “what a responsibility!”

“Ah, you recognise! you understand the—­the necessities, yes?”

At that moment the train stopped at Civita Vecchia, and the Senator awoke and put his hat on.  “The Eternal City,” he remarked when he descried that the name of the station was not Rome, “appears to have an eternal railway to match.  There seems to be a feeding counter here though—­we might have another try at those slices of veal boiled in tomatoes and smothered with macaroni that they give the pilgrim stranger in these parts.  You may lead the world in romance, Count, but you don’t put any of it in your railway refreshments.”

As we passed out into the smooth-toned talkative darkness, Count Filgiatti said in my ear, “Mistra and Madame Wick have kindly consented to receive my visit at the hotel to-morrow.  Is it agreeable to you also that I come?”

And I said, “Why, certainly!”

CHAPTER XI.

We descended next morning to realise how original we were in being in the plains of Italy in July.  The Fulda people and the Miss Binghams and Mrs. Portheris had prevented our noticing it before, but in the Hotel Mascigni, Via del Tritone, we seemed to have arrived at a point of arid solitude, which gave poppa a new and convincing sense of all he was going through in pursuit of Continental culture.  We sat in one corner of the “Sala di mangiari” at a small square table, and in all the length and breadth and sumptuousness of that magnificent apartment—­Italian hotel dining-rooms are always florid and palatial—­there was only one other little square table with a cloth on it and an appearance of expectancy.  The rest were heaped with chairs, bottom side up, with their legs in the air; the chandeliers were tied up in brown holland, and through a depressed and exhausted atmosphere, suggestive of magnificent occasions temporarily in eclipse, moved, with a casual languid air, a very tall waiter and a very short one.  At mysterious exits to the rear occasionally appeared the form of the chef exchanging plates.  It was borne in upon one that in the season the chef would be remanded to the most inviolable seclusion.

“Do you suppose Pompeii will be any worse than this?” inquired the Senator.

“Talk about Americans pervading the Continent,” he continued, casting his eye over the surrounding desolation.  “Where are they?  I should be glad to see them.  Great Scott! if it comes to that, I should be glad to see a blooming Englishman!”

It wasn’t an answer to prayer, for there had been no opportunity for devotion, but at that moment the door opened and admitted Mr., Mrs., and Miss Emmeline Malt, and Miss Callis.  The reunion was as rapt as the Senator and Emmeline could make it, and cordial in every other respect.  Mr. Malt explained that they had come straight through from Paris, as time was beginning to press.