all heard her who were still
clustered round the spot on which we had dined.

"What has become of Mr. O'Brien?" a lady whispered to me.

I had a field-glass with me, and, looking round, I saw his hat as he was
walking inside the walls of the circus in the direction toward the city.
"And very foolish he must feel," said the lady.

"No doubt he is used to it," said another.

"But considering her age, you know," said the first, who might have been
perhaps three years younger than Mrs. Talboys, and who was not herself
averse to the excitement of a moderate flirtation. But then why should
she have been averse, seeing that she had not as yet become subject to
the will of any imperial lord?

"He would have felt much more foolish," said the third, "if she had
listened to what he said to her."

"Well, I don't know," said the second; "nobody would have known anything
about it then, and in a few weeks they would have gradually become tired
of each other in the ordinary way."

But in the meantime Mrs. Talboys was among us. There had been no attempt
at secrecy, and she was still loudly inveighing against the grovelling
propensities of men. "That's quite true, Mrs. Talboys," said one of the
elder ladies; "but then women are not always so careful as they should
be. Of course I do not mean to say that there has been any fault on your
part."

"Fault on my part! Of course there has been fault on my part. No one can
make any mistake without fault to some extent. I took him to be a man of
sense, and he is a fool. Go to Naples indeed."

"Did he want you to go to Naples?" asked Mrs. Mackinnon.

"Yes; that was what he suggested. We were to leave by the train for
Civita Vecchia at six to-morrow morning, and catch the steamer which
leaves Leghorn to-night. Don't tell me of wine. He was prepared for it!"
And she looked round about on us with an air of injured majesty in her
face which was almost insupportable.

"I wonder whether he took the tickets overnight," said Mackinnon.

"Naples!" she said, as though now speaking exclusively to herself, "the
only ground in Italy which has as yet made no struggle on behalf of
freedom--a fitting residence for such a dastard!"

"You would have found it very pleasant at this season," said the
unmarried lady who was three years her junior.

My wife had taken Ida out of the way when the first complaining note
from Mrs. Talboys had been heard ascending the hill. But now, when
matters began gradu