erious injury to his heart no one
doubted; but then what would occur when the declaration was made? How
would Mrs. Talboys bear it?

"She deserves it," said Mrs. Mackinnon.

"And twice as much," my wife added. Why is it that women are so spiteful
to one another?

Early in the day Mrs. Talboys clambered up to the top of a tomb, and
made a little speech, holding a parasol over her head. Beneath her feet,
she said, reposed the ashes of some bloated senator, some glutton of
the empire, who had swallowed into his maw the provision necessary for
a tribe. Old Rome had fallen through such selfishness as that, but
new Rome would not forget the lesson. All this was very well, and then
O'Brien helped her down; but after this there was no separating them.
For her own part, she would sooner have had Mackinnon at her elbow; but
Mackinnon now had found some other elbow. "Enough of that was as good
as a feast," he had said to his wife. And therefore Mrs. Talboys, quite
unconscious of evil, allowed herself to be engrossed by O'Brien.

And then, about three o'clock, we returned to the hamper. Luncheon under
such circumstances always means dinner, and we arranged ourselves for a
very comfortable meal. To those who know the tomb of Cecilia Metella
no description of the scene is necessary, and to those who do not no
description will convey a fair idea of its reality. It is itself a large
low tower of great diameter, but of beautiful proportion, standing far
outside the city, close on to the side of the old Roman way. It has been
embattled on the top by some latter-day baron in order that it might be
used for protection to the castle which has been built on and attached
to it. If I remember rightly, this was done by one of the Frangipani,
and a very lovely ruin he has made of it. I know no castellated old
tumble-down residence in Italy more picturesque than this baronial
adjunct to the old Roman tomb, or which better tallies with the ideas
engendered within our minds by Mrs. Radcliffe and "The Mysteries of
Udolpho." It lies along the road, protected on the side of the city by
the proud sepulchre of the Roman matron, and up to the long ruined walls
of the back of the building stretches a grassy slope, at the bottom of
which are the remains of an old Roman circus. Beyond that is the long,
thin, graceful line of the Claudian aqueduct, with Soracte in the
distance to the left, and Tivoli, Palestrina, and Frascati lying among
the hills which