Financieres' was mainly frequented by rich Americans full
of ready money, and by rich Russians of large credit. Better Americans
and worse, went, like the English, to smaller and cheaper hotels;
and Clementina's acquaintance was confined to mothers as shy and
ungrammatical as Mrs. Lander herself, and daughters blankly indifferent
to her. Mrs. Lander drove out every day when it did not rain, and she
took Clementina with her, because the doctor said it would do them
both good; but otherwise the girl remained pent in their apartment. The
doctor found her a teacher, and she kept on with her French, and began
to take lessons in Italian; she spoke with no one but her teacher,
except when the doctor came. At the table d'hote she heard talk of the
things that people seemed to come to Florence for: pictures, statues,
palaces, famous places; and it made her ashamed of not knowing about
them. But she could not go to see these things alone, and Mrs. Lander,
in the content she felt with all her circumstances, seemed not to
suppose that Clementina could care for anything but the comfort of the
hotel and the doctor's visits. When the girl began to get letters from
home in answer to the first she had written back, boasting how beautiful
Florence was, they assumed that she was very gay, and demanded full
accounts of her pleasures. Her brother Jim gave something of the village
news, but he said he supposed that she would not care for that, and she
would probably be too proud to speak to them when she came home. The
Richlings had called in to share the family satisfaction in Clementina's
first experiences, and Mrs. Richling wrote her very sweetly of their
happiness in them. She charged her from the rector not to forget any
chance of self-improvement in the allurements of society, but to
make the most of her rare opportunities. She said that they had got a
guide-book to Florence, with a plan of the city, and were following her
in the expeditions they decided she must be making every day; they were
reading up the Florentine history in Sismondi's Italian Republics,
and she bade Clementina be sure and see all the scenes of Savonarola's
martyrdom, so that they could talk them over together when she returned.

Clementina wondered what Mrs. Richling would think if she told her that
all she knew of Florence was what she overheard in the talk of the girls
in the hotel, who spoke before her of their dances and afternoon teas,
and evenings at the ope