ve such
music.

She surprised him by opening her eyes and whispering:

"Don't you want to smoke?" showing that for a moment at least she had
not been thinking of music. "You can, if you want to. Here, we've got
some. Don't go and think, now, that Estelle and I have taken to smoking.
Heavens above! We sent out for them the other night when Charlie Hunt
was here."

She reached across the table near her and handed him a box of
cigarettes.

He was very glad to light one. To smoke is soothing, and he felt the
need of it. Added to his vague distress at the spectacle of such
familiarity from these ladies to that impossible little Italian, a
ferment of resentment was disquieting him apropos of Hunt--those works
of art of which Hunt had facilitated the purchase.

Hunt, of a truth, ever since the first mention of him that evening had
been like a fish bone in Gerald's throat.

He checked his thoughts, recognizing that it is not sane or safe to
permit oneself to interpret the conduct of a person whom one does not
like. The chances of being misled are too great. He uprooted a suspicion
dishonoring to both.

Let it be taken for assured, then, that Hunt had in this case no
interest to forward beyond his love for making himself important. After
all, if the ladies liked bad pictures!... Yet it was a shame that he
should frequent their house, be accepted as their friend, invited by
them, made much of in their innocent and generous way, then should make
fun of them. Permissible, if you choose, to make fun of funny people,
but you must not at the same time make use of their kindness. A precept
for the perfect gentleman, in Florence or elsewhere: You can make fun of
persons, or you can cultivate their friendship, but not both things at
once. And Gerald, without proof, felt certain that Charlie Hunt spread
good stories about Aurora.

Mrs. Innes, his mother's old friend, meeting him at Vieusseux's
reading-room a few days before, had detained him for a chat, and in the
course of it asked him if he knew this Mrs. Hawthorne of whom the Fosses
appeared so fond. An amusing type, she must be. Seeing that statue of
the she-wolf and little Romulus and Remus at the foot of Vial de' Colli,
it seemed she had asked what it meant, and said she didn't believe it.

It indefinably hurt him, incommoded some nerve of envenomed
sensitiveness--yes, annoyed him like sand in his salad, to think of his
country-woman, with the good faith of a dog in her