he persons about her. Her
energy was prodigious. Everything to do with money matters had been
practically settled between her and Sorell and Uncle Ewen; and settled
in Connie's way, expressed no doubt in business form. And now she was
insisting firmly on the holiday visit to Rome, in spite of many protests
from Uncle Ewen and Nora. It was a promise, she declared.
Rome--Rome--was their fate. She wrote endless letters, enquiring for
rooms, and announcing their coming to her old friends. Uncle Ewen soon
had the startled impression that all Rome was waiting for them, and that
they could never live up to it.

Finally, Connie persuaded them to settle on rooms in a well-known small
hotel, overlooking the garden-front of the Palazzo Barberini, where she
had grown up. She wrote to the innkeeper, Signor B., "a very old friend
of mine," who replied that the "_amici_" of the "_distintissima
signorina_" should be most tenderly looked after. As for the contessas
and marchesas who wrote, eagerly promising their "dearest Constance"
that they would be kind to her relations, they were many; and when Ewen
Hooper said nervously that it was clear he must take out both a
frock-coat and dress clothes, Constance laughed and said, "Not at
all!--Signer B. will lend you any thing you want,"--a remark which, in
the ears of the travellers to be, threw new and unexpected light on the
functions of an Italian innkeeper. Meanwhile she piled up guide-books,
she gathered maps; and she taught both her uncle and Nora Italian. And
so long as she was busied with such matters she seemed the gayest of
creatures, and would go singing and laughing about the house.

In another old house in Oxford, too, her coming made delight. She spent
many long hours beside the Master of Beaumont's fire, gathering fresh
light on the ways of scholarship and scholars. The quarrels of the
learned had never hitherto come her way. Her father had never quarrelled
with anybody. But the Master--poor great man!--had quarrelled with so
many people! He had missed promotions which should have been his; he had
made discoveries of which others had got the credit; and he kept a quite
amazing stock of hatreds in some pocket of his vast intelligence.
Constance would listen at first to the expression of them in an awed
silence. Was it possible the world contained such mean and treacherous
monsters? And why did it matter so much to a man who knew
everything?--who held all the classics and all th