good at railway stations and such places. Mrs. Hilary was not.

They drove out into the hideous new streets. Mrs. Hilary shivered.

"Oh, how ugly!"

"Rome is ugly, this part."

"It's worse since '99."

But she did not really remember clearly how it had looked in '99. The old
desire to pose, to show that she knew something, took her. Yet she felt
that Nan, who knew that she knew next to nothing, would not be deceived.

"Oh ... the Forum!"

"The Forum of Trajan," Nan said. "We don't pass the Roman Forum on the
way to our street."

"The Forum of Trajan, of course, I meant that."

But she knew that Nan knew she had meant the Forum Romanum.

"Rome is always Rome," she said, which was safer than identifying
particular buildings, or even Forums, in it. "Nothing like it anywhere."

"How long can you stay, mother? I've got you a room in the house I'm
lodging in. It's in a little street the other side of the Corso. Rather
a mediaeval street, I'm afraid. That is, it smells. But the rooms are
clean."

"Oh, I'm not staying long.... We'll talk later; talk it all out. A
thorough talk. When we get in. After a cup of tea...."

Mrs. Hilary remembered that Nan did not yet know why she had come. After
a cup of strong tea.... A cup of tea first.... Coffee wasn't the same.
One needed tea, after those awful Germans. She told Nan about these. Nan
knew that she would have had tiresome travelling companions; she always
did; if it weren't Germans it would be inconsiderate English. She was
unlucky.

"Go straight to bed and rest when we get in," Nan advised; but she shook
her head. "We must talk first."

Nan, she thought, looked pinched about the lips, and thin, and her black
brows were at times nervous and sullen. Nan did not look happy. Was it
guilt, or merely the chill morning air?

They stopped at a shabby old house in a narrow mediaeval street in the
Borgo, which had been a palace and was now let in apartments. Here Nan
had two bare, gilded, faded rooms. Mrs. Hilary sat by a charcoal stove in
one of them, and Nan made her some tea. After the tea Mrs. Hilary felt
revived. She wouldn't go to bed; she felt that the time for the talk had
come. She looked round the room for signs of Stephen Lumley, but all the
signs she saw were of Nan; Nan's books, Nan's proofs strewing the table.
Of course that bad man wouldn't come while she was there. He was no doubt
waiting eagerly for her to be gone. Probably they both were....

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