ch artist, and unless she took
the trouble to make acquaintances, there was nothing attractive enough
about the capital to keep her. She allowed herself to be driven about
the town, on pretence of seeing churches and galleries, but in reality
she saw very little of either. She was preoccupied with her own thoughts
and subject to fits of abstraction. Most things seemed to her intensely
dull, and the unhappy guide who had been selected to accompany her on
her excursions, wasted his learning upon her on the first morning, and
subsequently exhausted the magnificent catalogue of impossibilities
which he had concocted for the especial benefit of the uncultivated
foreigner, without eliciting so much as a look of interest or an
expression of surprise. He was a young and fascinating guide, wearing a
white satin tie, and on the third day he recited some verses of
Stecchetti and was about to risk a declaration of worship in ornate
prose, when he was suddenly rather badly scared by the lady's yellow
eyes, and ran on nervously with a string of deceased popes and their
dates.

"Get me a card for the Jubilee," she said abruptly.

"An entrance is very easily procured," answered the guide. "In fact I
have one in my pocket, as it happens. I bought it for twenty francs this
morning, thinking that one of my foreigners would perhaps take it of me.
I do not even gain a franc--my word of honour."

Madame d'Aragona glanced at the slip of paper.

"Not that," she answered. "Do you imagine that I will stand? I want a
seat in one of the tribunes."

The guide lost himself in apologies, but explained that he could not
get what she desired.

"What are you for?" she inquired.

She was an indolent woman, but when by any chance she wanted anything,
Donna Tullia herself was not more restless. She drove at once to
Gouache's studio. He was alone and she told him what she needed.

"The Jubilee, Madame? Is it possible that you have been forgotten?"

"Since they have never heard of me! I have not the slightest claim to a
place."

"It is you who say that. But your place is already secured. Fear
nothing. You will be with the Roman ladies."

"I do not understand--"

"It is simple. I was thinking of it yesterday. Young Saracinesca comes
in and begins to talk about you. There is Madame d'Aragona who has no
seat, he says. One must arrange that. So it is arranged."

"By Don Orsino?"

"You would not accept? No. A young man, and you have only met onc