ling a certain amount of sympathy for the Count. "I hope, daughter,"
he said, "you didn't give him the ha-ha to his face."

CHAPTER XIII.

There is the very tenderness of desolation upon the Appian Way. To me it
suggested nothing of the splendour of Roman villas and the tragedy of
flying Emperors. It spoke only of itself, lying over the wide silence of
the noon-day fields, historic doubtless, but noon-day certainly.
Something lives upon the warm stretches of the Appian Way, something
that talks of the eternal and unchangeable, and yet has the pathos of
the fragmentary and the lost. Perhaps it is the ghost of a genius that
has failed of reincarnation, and inspires the weeds and the leaf-shadows
instead. Thinking of it, one remembers only an almond tree in flower,
that grew beside a ruined arch by the wayside--both quite alone in the
sunlight--and perhaps of a meek, young, marble Cecilia, unquestioningly
prostrate, submissive to the axe.

We were on our way to the Catacombs, momma, the Senator, and Mrs.
Portheris in one carriage, R. Dod, Mr. Mafferton, Isabel, and I in the
other. I approved of the arrangement, because the mutually distant
understanding that existed between Mr. Mafferton and me had already been
the subject of remark by my parents. ("For old London acquaintances you
and Mr. Mafferton seem to have very little to say to each other," momma
had observed that very morning.) It was borne in upon me that this was
absurd. People have no business to be estranged for life because one of
them has happened to propose to the other, unless, of course, he has
been accepted and afterwards divorced, which is quite a different thing.
Besides, there was Dicky to think of. I decided that there was a medium
in all things, and to help me to find it I wore a blouse from Madame
Valerie in the Rue de l'Opera, which cost seven times its value, and was
naturally becoming. Perhaps this was going to extreme measures; but he
was a recalcitrant Englishman, and for Dicky's sake one had to think of
everything.

Englishmen have a genius for looking uncomfortable. Their feelings are
terribly mixed up with their personal appearance. It was some time
before Mr. Mafferton would consent to be even tolerably at his ease,
though I made a distinct effort to show that I bore no malice. It must
have been the mere memory of the past that embarrassed him, for the
other two were as completely unaware of his existence as they well could
be in