“I don’t know.  If I sail from Naples I shall probably pass through Rome.”

“You had better stop off.  We shall be there in November, and they say Rome is worth seeing,” she laughed demurely.  “That is what Boyne understands.  He’s promised to use his influence with his family to let him run down to see us there, if he can’t get them all to come.  You might offer to personally conduct them.”

“Yes.” said Breckon, with the effect of cloture.  “Have you made many acquaintances an board?”

“What!  Two lone women?  You haven’t introduced us to any but the Kentons.  But I dare say they are the best.  The judge is a dear, and Mrs. Kenton is everything that is motherly and matronly.  Boyne says she is very well informed, and knows all about the reigning families.  If he decides to marry into them, she can be of great use in saving him from a mesalliance.  I can’t say very much for Miss Lottie.  Miss Lottie seems to me distinctly of the minx type.  But that poor, pale girl is adorable.  I wish she liked me!”

“What makes you think she doesn’t like you?” Breckon asked.

“What?  Women don’t require anything to convince them that other women can’t bear them.  They simply know it.  I wonder what has happened to her?”

“Why do you think anything has happened to her?”

“Why?  Well, girls don’t have that air of melanholy absence for nothing.  She is brooding upon something, you may be sure.  But you have had so many more opportunities than I!  Do you mean that you haven’t suspected a tragical past far her?”

“I don’t know,” said Breckon, a little restively, “that I have allowed myself to speculate about her past.”

“That is, you oughtn’t to have allowed yourself to do so.  Well, there I agree with you.  But a woman may do so without impertinence, and I am sure that Miss Kenton has a story.  I have watched her, and her face has told me everything but the story.”

Breckon would not say that some such revelation had been made to him, and in the absence of an answer from him Miss Rasmith asked, “Is she cultivated, too?”

“Too?”

“Like her mother.”

“Oh!  I should say she had read a good dial.  And she’s bookish, yes, in a simple-hearted kind of way.”

“She asks you if you have read ‘the book of the year,’ and whether you don’t think the heroine is a beautiful character?”

“Not quite so bad as that.  But if you care to be serious about her!”

“Oh, I do!”

“I doubt it.  Then, I should say that she seems to have grown up in a place where the interests are so material that a girl who was disposed to be thoughtful would be thrown back upon reading for her society more than in more intellectual centres—­if there are such things.  She has been so much with books that she does not feel odd in speaking of them as if they were the usual topics of conversation.  It gives her a certain quaintness.”