; when, unfortunately, she had imputed to him certain utterances
that rightfully belong to another literary man who lived in quite a
different age and country.

Mr. Sumner could not avoid a merry twinkle of his eyes as he strove to
answer with becoming gravity, and Malcom hastily pushed on far in
advance.

Once at home, Malcom and Margery gave their version of the affair to
their mother.

"It isn't the first time she has looked like that at both Barbara and
Betty," averred Malcom, emphatically, "and they have known and felt it,
too."

"I am very sorry," said Mrs. Douglas, with a troubled look.

"Oh! you need not fear anything further, mother _mia_" said Malcom,
sympathizingly. "Barbara will never show any more feeling. She would not
have done it for herself, only for Betty. Under the circumstances she
just had to fire her independence-gun, that is all. Now there will be
perfect peace on her side. You know her.

"And," he added in an aside to Margery, as his mother was leaving the
room, "Miss Sherman will not dare to be cross openly for fear of mother
and Uncle Rob. I didn't dare to look at her. But wasn't it rich?" And he
went off into a peal of laughter.

"It was only what she deserved, anyway," said Margery, who was usually
most gentle in all her judgments.

It was quite a commentary on Mrs. Douglas's judgment of Lucile Sherman's
character at this time, that she now deemed it best to tell her of
Howard's bequest to Barbara, about which she had heretofore held
silence.

Chapter XVI.

Poor Barbara's Trouble.

_O, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day;
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by and by a cloud takes all away._

--SHAKESPEARE.

[Illustration: A BIT OF AMALFI.]

Barbara and Bettina, sometimes accompanied by Mrs. Douglas, sometimes by
Malcom, usually by Margery, saw all the remaining and important art
treasures of Rome.

They studied long the Vatican and Capitol sculptures; went to the
Barberini Palace to see Raphael's _La Fornarina_, so rich in color; and,
close beside it, the pale, tearful face of Beatrice Cenci, so long
attributed to Guido Reni, but whose authorship is now doubtful; to the
doleful old church Santa Maria dei Capuccini, to see _St. Michael and
the Dragon_ by Guido Reni, in which they were especially interested,
because Hawthorne made it a rendezvous of the four friends in his
"Marble Faun," where so d