his stepfather's words. The Contessa and her daughter had
returned to Rome, and Corbario often went to see them, whereas Marcello
had not been even once. When Marcello had last seen Folco in the
Engadine, he had left him sitting in their little room at the hotel.
Folco was not at all too old to marry Aurora; he was rich, at least for
life, and Aurora was poor; he was good-looking, accomplished, and ready
with his tongue. It was by no means impossible that he might make an
impression on the girl and ultimately win her. Besides, Marcello felt
that odd little resentment against Aurora which very young men sometimes
feel against young girls, whom they have thought they loved, or are
really about to love, or are afraid of loving, which makes them rude, or
unjust, or both, towards those perhaps quite unconscious maidens, and
which no woman can ever understand.

"My dear Harry, why will you be so disagreeable to Mary?" asks the
wondering mother. "She is such a charming girl, and only the other day
she was saying that you are such a nice boy!"

"Humph!" snorts Harry rudely, and forthwith lights his pipe and goes off
to the stables to growl in peace, or across country, or to his boat, or
to any other heavenly place not infested by women.

There had been moments when, in his heart, Marcello had almost said that
it would serve Aurora right to be married to Corbario; yet at the first
hint from the latter that she was at all in danger of such a fate,
Marcello had broken out as if the girl's good name had been attacked,
and had turned his stepfather out of the house in a very summary
fashion.

Having done so, he left the villa on foot, though it was raining hard,
and walked quickly past San Pietro in Montorio and down the hill towards
Trastevere. The southwest wind blew the rain under his umbrella; it was
chilly as well as wet, and a few big leaves were beginning to fall from
the plane-trees.

He was not going to the little house, where Regina sat by the window
looking at the rain and wishing that he would come soon. When he was
down in the streets he hailed the first cab he saw, gave the man an
address in the Forum of Trajan, and climbed in under the hood, behind
the dripping leathern apron, taking his umbrella with him and getting
thoroughly wet, as is inevitable when one takes a Roman cab in the rain.

The Contessa was out, in spite of the weather, but Marcello asked if
Aurora would see him, and presently he was admitted to