the clever lady, crying: "Prato! They must go to Prato. That place is
too sweetly squalid for words. I love it; I revel in shaking off the
trammels of respectability, as you know."

The young man named George glanced at the clever lady, and then returned
moodily to his plate. Obviously he and his father did not do. Lucy, in
the midst of her success, found time to wish they did. It gave her no
extra pleasure that any one should be left in the cold; and when she
rose to go, she turned back and gave the two outsiders a nervous little
bow.

The father did not see it; the son acknowledged it, not by another bow,
but by raising his eyebrows and smiling; he seemed to be smiling across
something.

She hastened after her cousin, who had already disappeared through the
curtains--curtains which smote one in the face, and seemed heavy with
more than cloth. Beyond them stood the unreliable Signora, bowing
good-evening to her guests, and supported by 'Enery, her little boy, and
Victorier, her daughter. It made a curious little scene, this attempt
of the Cockney to convey the grace and geniality of the South. And even
more curious was the drawing-room, which attempted to rival the solid
comfort of a Bloomsbury boarding-house. Was this really Italy?

Miss Bartlett was already seated on a tightly stuffed arm-chair, which
had the colour and the contours of a tomato. She was talking to Mr.
Beebe, and as she spoke, her long narrow head drove backwards and
forwards, slowly, regularly, as though she were demolishing some
invisible obstacle. "We are most grateful to you," she was saying.
"The first evening means so much. When you arrived we were in for a
peculiarly mauvais quart d'heure."

He expressed his regret.

"Do you, by any chance, know the name of an old man who sat opposite us
at dinner?"

"Emerson."

"Is he a friend of yours?"

"We are friendly--as one is in pensions."

"Then I will say no more."

He pressed her very slightly, and she said more.

"I am, as it were," she concluded, "the chaperon of my young cousin,
Lucy, and it would be a serious thing if I put her under an obligation
to people of whom we know nothing. His manner was somewhat unfortunate.
I hope I acted for the best."

"You acted very naturally," said he. He seemed thoughtful, and after
a few moments added: "All the same, I don't think much harm would have
come of accepting."

"No harm, of course. But we could not be under an obligation."

"He is