“Brigida!” cried Madame Petrucci, going to the door.  “Brigida! our charming English friend is arrived!”

“All right!” answered a strong hearty voice from upstairs.  “I’m coming.”

“You must excuse me, dear Miss Hamelyn,” went on Madame Petrucci.  “You must excuse me for shouting in your presence, but we have only one little servant, and during this suffocating weather I find that any movement reminds me of approaching age.”  The old lady smiled, as if that time were still far ahead.

“I am sure you ought to take care of yourself,” said Miss Hamelyn.  “I hope you will not allow Goneril to fatigue you.”

“Gonerilla!  What a pretty name!  Charming!  I suppose it is in your family?” asked the old lady.

Miss Hamelyn blushed a little, for her niece’s name was a sore point with her.

“It’s an awful name for any Christian woman,” said a deep voice at the door.  “And pray who’s called Goneril?”

Miss Prunty came forward; a short, thick-set woman of fifty, with fine dark eyes, and, even in a Florentine summer, with something stiff and masculine in the fashion of her dress.

“And have you brought your niece?” she said, turning to Miss Hamelyn.

“Yes, she is in the garden.”

“Well; I hope she understands that she’ll have to rough it here.”

“Goneril is a very simple girl,” said Miss Hamelyn.

“So it’s she that’s called Goneril?”

“Yes,” said the aunt, making an effort.  “Of course I am aware of the strangeness of the name, but—­but in fact my brother was devotedly attached to his wife, who died at Goneril’s birth.”

“Whew!” whistled Miss Prunty.  “The parson must have been a fool who christened her!”

“He did, in fact, refuse; but my brother would have no baptism saving with that name, which, unfortunately, it is impossible to shorten.”

“I think it is a charming name!” said Madame Petrucci, coming to the rescue.  “Goneril:  it dies on one’s lips like music!  And if you do not like it, Brigida, what’s in a name? as your charming Byron said.”

“I hope we shall make her happy,” said Miss Prunty.

“Of course we shall!” cried the elder lady.

“Goneril is easily made happy,” asserted Miss Hamelyn.

“That’s a good thing,” snapped Miss Prunty; “for there’s not much here to make her so!”

“Oh, Brigida!  I am sure there are many attractions.  The air! the view! the historic association! and, more than all, you know there is always a chance of the Signorino!”

“Of whom?” said Miss Hamelyn, rather anxiously.

“Of him!” cried Madame Petrucci, pointing to the engraving opposite.  “He lives, of course, in the capital; but he rents the villa behind our house—­the Medici Villa; and when he is tired of Rome he runs down here for a week or so; and so your Gonerilla may have the benefit of his society!”

“Very nice, I’m sure!” said Miss Hamelyn, greatly relieved; for she knew that Signor Graziano must be fifty.