It would be a leap in the dark, and all such leaps must needs be
dangerous, and therefore should be avoided. But she did like the man.
Her friend was untrue to her and cruel in those allusions to tinkling
cymbals. It might be well for her to get over her liking, and to
think no more of one who was to her a foreigner and a stranger,--of
whose ways of living in his own home she knew so little, whose people
might be antipathetic to her, enemies instead of friends, among whom
her life would be one long misery; but it was not on that ground
that Miss Petrie had recommended her to start for Rome as soon as
Mr. Glascock had reached Florence. "There is no reason," she said to
herself, "why I should not marry a man if I like him, even though
he be a lord. And of him I should not be the least afraid. It's the
women that I fear." And then she called to mind all that she had ever
heard of English countesses and duchesses. She thought that she knew
that they were generally cold and proud, and very little given to
receive outsiders graciously within their ranks. Mr. Glascock had
an aunt who was a Duchess, and a sister who would be a Countess.
Caroline Spalding felt how her back would rise against these new
relations, if it should come to pass that they should look unkindly
upon her when she was taken to her own home;--how she would fight
with them, giving them scorn for scorn; how unutterably miserable
she would be; how she would long to be back among her own equals, in
spite even of her love for her husband. "How grand a thing it is,"
she said, "to be equal with those whom you love!" And yet she was to
some extent allured by the social position of the man. She could
perceive that he had a charm of manner which her countrymen lacked.
He had read, perhaps, less than her uncle;--knew, perhaps, less than
most of those men with whom she had been wont to associate in her
own city life at home;--was not braver, or more virtuous, or more
self-denying than they; but there was a softness and an ease in
his manner which was palatable to her, and an absence of that too
visible effort of the intellect which is so apt to mark and mar
the conversation of Americans. She almost wished that she had been
English, in order that the man's home and friends might have suited
her. She was thinking of all this as she stood pretending to talk to
an American lady, who was very eloquent on the delights of Florence.

In the meantime Olivia and Mr. Glascock ha