ose days;
and I had a great many handsome men around me, and some not handsome.
....Was I English? No. You don't understand how I could have seen so
much of your father. Well, never doubt a story till you have heard the
whole of it. I was an American girl; but my father and mother were both
dead, and I was sent to England, to be brought up by an aunt, who was
the nearest relation I had in the world. She had married an Englishman
and settled in England."

"Then we may claim you," said Lawrence. "To all intents and purposes
you are English."

"Might have been," returned Mrs. Thayer. "The flirtation ran very high,
I can tell you, between your father and me. He was a poor man then. I
understand he has nobly recovered from that fault. Is it true? People
say he is made of gold."

"There is no lack of the material article," Lawrence admitted.

"No. Well, the other sort we know he had, or this would never be true
of him now. I did not look so far ahead then. There is no telling what
would have happened, but for a little thing. Just see how things go. I
might have married in England, and all my life would have been
different; and then came along Mr. Thayer. And the way I came to know
him was this. A cousin of mine in America was going to be married, and
her friend was a friend of Mr. Thayer. Mr. Thayer was coming over to
England, and my cousin charged him with a little piece of wedding cake
in white paper to bring to me. Just that little white packet! and Mr.
Thayer brought it, and we saw one another, and the end was, I have
lived my life on the other side instead of on this side."

"It's our loss, I am sure," said St. Leger civilly.

"You are too polite to say it is mine, but I know you think so. Perhaps
it is. At any rate, I was determined, and am determined, that my
daughter shall see and choose for herself which hemisphere she will
live in. What are you doing in Italy?"

"What everybody does in Italy, looking at the old and enjoying the new."

"Ah, that's what it is!" said Mrs. Thayer approvingly. "That is what
one enjoys. But my husband is one of the other sort. We divide Italy
between us. He looks at the marbles, and I eat the pomegranates. Do you
like pomegranates?--No? I delight in them, and in everything else fresh
and new and sweet and acid. But what I want to know, Mr. St. Leger,
is--how come these old ruins to be so worth looking at? Hasn't the
human race made progress? Can't we raise as good buildings now-a