hould be spared the humiliation of
explaining to Guido what she felt, and why she had honestly believed
that she loved him.

And after all, if she were obliged to marry him, she supposed that she
would never be more unhappy than she was already. It was her fate, that
was all that could be said, and she must bear it, and perhaps it would
not be so hard as it seemed. A character weaker than hers might perhaps
have turned against Guido; she might have found her friendly affection
suddenly changed into a capricious dislike that would soon lead to
positive hatred. But there was no fear of that. She only wished that he
would not talk perpetually about the future, with so much absolute
confidence, when it seemed to her so terribly problematic.

Such conversations were made all the more difficult to sustain by the
fact that if they were married, she, as the possessor of the fortune,
would be obliged to decide many questions with regard to their manner of
life.

"For my part," Guido said, "I do not care where we live, so long as you
like the place, but you will naturally wish to be near your mother."

"Oh yes!" cried Cecilia, with more conviction than she had shown about
anything of late. "I could not bear to be separated from her!"

Lamberti had once observed to Guido that she was an indulgent daughter;
and Guido had smiled and reminded his friend of the younger Dumas, who
once said that his father always seemed to him a favourite child that
had been born to him before he came into the world. Cecilia was
certainly fond of her mother, but it had never occurred to Guido that
she could not live without her. He was in a state of mind, however, in
which a man in love accepts everything as a matter of course, and he
merely answered that in that case they would naturally live in Rome.

"We could just live here, for the present," she said. "There is the
Palazzo Massimo. I am sure it is big enough. Should you dislike it?"

She was thinking that if she could keep her own room, and have Petersen
with her, and her mother, the change would not be so great after all.
Guido said nothing, and his expression was a blank.

"Why not?" Cecilia insisted, and all sorts of practical reasons
suggested themselves at once. "It is a very comfortable house, though it
is a little ghostly at night. There are dreadful stories about it, you
know. But what does that matter? It is big, and in a good part of the
city, and we have just furnished it; so of