e or a nightingale, but it was a good-humoured roar, not very
offensive to any man and apparently acceptable enough to some ladies. He
was a big, burly man, near to fifty, as I suppose, somewhat awkward in
his gait, and somewhat loud in his laugh. But though nigh to fifty, and
thus ungainly, he liked to be smiled on by pretty women, and liked,
as some said, to be flattered by them also. If so he should have
been happy, for the ladies at Rome at that time made much of Conrad
Mackinnon.

Of Mrs. Mackinnon no one did make very much, and yet she was one of the
sweetest, dearest, quietest little creatures that ever made glad a
man's fireside. She was exquisitely pretty, always in good humour,
never stupid, self-denying to a fault, and yet she was generally in
the background. She would seldom come forward of her own will, but was
contented to sit behind her teapot and hear Mackinnon do his roaring. He
was certainly much given to what the world at Rome called flirting, but
this did not in the least annoy her. She was twenty years his
junior, and yet she never flirted with any one. Women would tell
her--good-natured friends--how Mackinnon went on, but she received such
tidings as an excellent joke, observing that he had always done the
same, and no doubt always would until he was ninety. I do believe that
she was a happy woman, and yet I used to think that she should have been
happier. There is, however, no knowing the inside of another man's house
or reading the riddles of another man's joy and sorrow.

We had also there another lion,--a lion cub,--entitled to roar a little,
and of him also I must say something. Charles O'Brien was a young man
about twenty-five years of age, who had sent out from his studio in the
preceding year a certain bust supposed by his admirers to be unsurpassed
by any effort of ancient or modern genius. I am no judge of sculpture,
and will not therefore pronounce an opinion, but many who considered
themselves to be judges declared that it was a "goodish head and
shoulders" and nothing more. I merely mention the fact, as it was on the
strength of that head and shoulders that O'Brien separated himself from
a throng of others such as himself in Rome, walked solitary during the
days, and threw himself at the feet of various ladies when the days were
over. He had ridden on the shoulders of his bust into a prominent place
in our circle, and there encountered much feminine admiration--from Mrs.
General Talbo