very
nicest people. Do you know Sir Harry Otway--a Radical if ever there
was?"

"Very well indeed."

"And old Mrs. Butterworth the philanthropist?" "Why, she rents a field
of us! How funny!"

Miss Lavish looked at the narrow ribbon of sky, and murmured: "Oh, you
have property in Surrey?"

"Hardly any," said Lucy, fearful of being thought a snob. "Only thirty
acres--just the garden, all downhill, and some fields."

Miss Lavish was not disgusted, and said it was just the size of her
aunt's Suffolk estate. Italy receded. They tried to remember the last
name of Lady Louisa some one, who had taken a house near Summer Street
the other year, but she had not liked it, which was odd of her. And just
as Miss Lavish had got the name, she broke off and exclaimed:

"Bless us! Bless us and save us! We've lost the way."

Certainly they had seemed a long time in reaching Santa Croce, the tower
of which had been plainly visible from the landing window. But Miss
Lavish had said so much about knowing her Florence by heart, that Lucy
had followed her with no misgivings.

"Lost! lost! My dear Miss Lucy, during our political diatribes we have
taken a wrong turning. How those horrid Conservatives would jeer at us!
What are we to do? Two lone females in an unknown town. Now, this is
what I call an adventure."

Lucy, who wanted to see Santa Croce, suggested, as a possible solution,
that they should ask the way there.

"Oh, but that is the word of a craven! And no, you are not, not, NOT to
look at your Baedeker. Give it to me; I shan't let you carry it. We will
simply drift."

Accordingly they drifted through a series of those grey-brown streets,
neither commodious nor picturesque, in which the eastern quarter of the
city abounds. Lucy soon lost interest in the discontent of Lady
Louisa, and became discontented herself. For one ravishing moment Italy
appeared. She stood in the Square of the Annunziata and saw in the
living terra-cotta those divine babies whom no cheap reproduction can
ever stale. There they stood, with their shining limbs bursting from
the garments of charity, and their strong white arms extended against
circlets of heaven. Lucy thought she had never seen anything more
beautiful; but Miss Lavish, with a shriek of dismay, dragged her
forward, declaring that they were out of their path now by at least a
mile.

The hour was approaching at which the continental breakfast begins, or
rather ceases, to tell, and the l