“Yes, I shall go with you to Rome.  Who is the man?”

“Mr. Seaborne—­your most reverent admirer.”

“Ah, I should like to know the fellow.”

Miriam looked at him and smiled.

“You know Mr. Seaborne?” he inquired of her, abruptly.

“He was with us a fortnight in Athens.”

As they were idling about, after their lunch, Mallard kept near to Miriam, but without speaking.  He saw her stoop to pick up a piece of stone; presently another.  She glanced at him.

“Bits of Paestum,” he said, smiling; “perhaps of Poseidonia.  Look at the field over there, where the oxen are; they have walled it in with fragments dug up out of the earth,—­the remnants of a city.”

She just bent her head, in sign of sympathy.  A minute or two after, she held out to him the two stones she had taken up.

“How cold one is, and how warm the other!”

One was marble, one travertine.  Mallard held them for a moment, and smiled assent; then gave them back to her.  She threw them away.

When it was time to think of departure, they went to the inn; Mallard’s baggage was brought out and put into the carriage.  They drove across the silent plain towards Salerno.  In a pause of his conversation with Spence, Mallard drew Miriam’s attention to the unfamiliar shape of Capri, as seen from this side of the Sorrento promontory.  She looked, and murmured an affirmative.

“You have been to Amalfi?” he asked.

“Yes; we went last year.”

“I hope you hadn’t such a day as your brother and I spent there—­ incessant pouring rain.”

“No; we had perfect weather.”

At Salerno they caught a train which enabled them to reach Naples late in the evening.  Mallard accompanied his friends to their hotel, and dined with them.  As he and Spence were smoking together afterwards, the latter communicated some news which he had reserved for privacy.

“By-the-bye, we hear that Cecily and her aunt are at Florence, and are coming to Rome next week.”

“Elgar with them?” Mallard asked, with nothing more than friendly interest.

“No.  They say he is so hard at work that he couldn’t leave London.”

“What work?”

“The same I told you of last year.”

Mallard regarded him with curious inquiry.

“His wife travels for her health?”

“She seems to be all right again, but Mrs. Lessingham judged that a change was necessary.  Won’t you use the opportunity of meeting her?”

“As it comes naturally, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t.  In fact, I shall be glad to see her.  But I should have preferred to meet them both together.  What faith do you put in this same work of Elgar’s?”

“That he is working, I take it there can be no doubt, and I await the results with no little curiosity.  Mrs. Lessingham writes vaguely, which, by-the-bye, is not her habit.  Whether she is a believer or not, we can’t determine.”