f the crimson heart on a
valentine reminded this other of rough velvet.

He showed his eccentric three front teeth in a responding smile that had
a touch of the faun, and asked whimsically:

"Will I do?"

"Help me to find Mr. Foss, and you'll do perfectly," she said merrily.
"I haven't seen him more than just to shake hands this whole evening,
and I do want to have a little talk before I go."

"If I am not mistaken, we shall find him in the library." He offered his
arm.

"I may have appeared to be doing something else, Mrs. Hawthorne, but I
have really been looking for you the last hour," said the consul when he
had been found. "I wanted to have a little talk. How are you enjoying
Florence?"

"Oh, we're having an elegant time, thanks to that dear wife of yours and
that dear girl, Leslie. I don't know what we should have done without
them and you."

"But the city itself, Florence, doesn't it enchant you?"

"We--ell, yes. N-n-n-no. Yes and no. That's it. You want me to tell the
truth, don't you? Some of it does, and some of it doesn't. Some of it, I
guess, will take me a long time to get used to. It's terribly different
from what we expected--I, in particular. You see, I came here because an
old friend used to talk so much about it. Florence the Fair! The City of
Lilies! He said Italy was the most beautiful country in the world, and
Florence the most beautiful city in Italy. So my expectations were way
up.--Oh, I don't know; it's hard to tell. I don't exactly remember now
what I did expect. I guess my picture of it was something like the New
Jerusalem on an Easter day. But I shall get used to this, like to the
taste of olives. It must be all right, for the friend I was speaking of
had the finest mind I've ever known. I'm green as turnip-tops, of
course, but I shall get educated up to it, I suppose. Give me time."

"Mrs. Hawthorne, hear me prophesy," said Mr. Foss. "In six months you
will love it all. It's the fate of us who come here from new countries.
It will steal in upon you, grow upon you, beset and besot you, till you
like no other place in the world so well."

"Will it? Well, if you say so. The Judge--the friend I was speaking
of,--said so much of the same kind that the minute I thought of coming
to Europe, right after I'd said, 'I'll go to Paris,' I said to myself,
'I'll go to Florence.'"

"Your friend was a judge of places."

"It wasn't he alone influenced me. He was sick a long time, and I used
t