en I see you so awfully
thick with him!"

"Don't speak of him; I'll do what I can for you. I'm afraid it won't be
much, but what I can I'll do."

He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. "What has suddenly brought you
round?"

"The sense that you are an inconvenience in doorways!" she answered,
smiling as she passed him. Half an hour later she took leave, with
Pansy, and at the foot of the staircase the two ladies, with many
other departing guests, waited a while for their carriage. Just as it
approached Lord Warburton came out of the house and assisted them to
reach their vehicle. He stood a moment at the door, asking Pansy if
she had amused herself; and she, having answered him, fell back with a
little air of fatigue. Then Isabel, at the window, detaining him by
a movement of her finger, murmured gently: "Don't forget to send your
letter to her father!"

CHAPTER XLIV

The Countess Gemini was often extremely bored--bored, in her own phrase,
to extinction. She had not been extinguished, however, and she
struggled bravely enough with her destiny, which had been to marry an
unaccommodating Florentine who insisted upon living in his native town,
where he enjoyed such consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose
talent for losing at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an
obliging disposition. The Count Gemini was not liked even by those who
won from him; and he bore a name which, having a measurable value in
Florence, was, like the local coin of the old Italian states, without
currency in other parts of the peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very
dull Florentine, and it is not remarkable that he should not have cared
to pay frequent visits to a place where, to carry it off, his dulness
needed more explanation than was convenient. The Countess lived with her
eyes upon Rome, and it was the constant grievance of her life that she
had not an habitation there. She was ashamed to say how seldom she had
been allowed to visit that city; it scarcely made the matter better that
there were other members of the Florentine nobility who never had been
there at all. She went whenever she could; that was all she could say.
Or rather not all, but all she said she could say. In fact she had much
more to say about it, and had often set forth the reasons why she hated
Florence and wished to end her days in the shadow of Saint Peter's. They
are reasons, however, that do not closely concern us, and were usually
summe