lla to overflowing when the time came
for it. She lived on one of the fine avenues of the Oltrarno region,
laid out in the brief period of prosperity which Florence enjoyed as
the capital of Italy. The villa was built at that time, and it was much
newer than the house on Seventeenth street in New York, where she spent
the girlhood that had since prolonged itself beyond middle life with
her. She had first lived abroad in the Paris of the Second Empire,
and she had been one winter in Rome, but she had settled definitely in
Florence before London became an American colony, so that her
friends were chiefly Americans, though she had a wide international
acquaintance. Perhaps her habit of taking her brother's part, when he
was a black sheep, inclined her to mercy with people who had not been so
blameless in their morals as they were in their minds and manners.
She exacted that they should be interesting and agreeable, and not too
threadbare; but if they had something that decently buttoned over the
frayed places, she did not frown upon their poverty. Bohemians of all
kinds liked her; Philistines liked her too; and in such a place as
Florence, where the Philistines themselves are a little Bohemian, she
might be said to be very popular. You met persons whom you did not quite
wish to meet at her house, but if these did not meet you there, it was
your loss.

XI.

On the night of the dance the line of private carriages, remises and
cabs, lined the Viale Ariosto for a mile up and down before her gates,
where young artists of both sexes arrived on foot. By this time her
passion for Clementina was at its height. She had Maddalena bring her
out early in the evening, and made her dress under her own eye and her
French maid's, while Maddalena went back to comfort Mrs. Lander.

"I hated to leave her," said Clementina. "I don't believe she's very
well."

"Isn't she always ill?" demanded Miss Milray. She embraced the girl
again, as if once were not enough. "Clementina, if Mrs. Lander won't
give you to me, I'm going to steal you. Do you know what I want you
to do tonight? I want you to stand up with me, and receive, till the
dancing begins, as if it were your coming-out. I mean to introduce
everybody to you. You'll be easily the prettiest girl, there, and you'll
have the nicest gown, and I don't mean that any of your charms shall be
thrown away. You won't be frightened?"

"No, I don't believe I shall," said Clementina. "You can