what use in the world is it
to go and do the same thing over again, in the next street?"

"That is very sensible," Guido was obliged to admit.

"But you do not like the idea, I am sure," Cecilia said, in a tone of
disappointment.

"I had not meant that we should live in the same house with your
mother," Guido said, with a smile. "Of course, she is a very charming
woman, and I like her very much, but I think that when people marry they
had much better go and live by themselves."

"Nobody ever used to," objected Cecilia. "It is only of late years that
they do it in Rome. Oh, I see!" she cried suddenly. "How dull of me!
Yes. I understand. It is quite natural."

"What?" asked Guido with some curiosity.

"You would feel that you had simply come to live in our house, because
you have no house of your own for us to live in. I ought to have thought
of that."

She seemed distressed, fancying that she had hurt him, but he had no
false pride.

"Every one knows my position," he answered. "Every one knows that if we
live in a palace, in the way you are used to live, it will be with your
money."

There was a little pause, for Cecilia did not know what to say. Guido
continued, following his own thoughts:

"If I did not love you as much as I do, I could not possibly live on
your fortune," he said. "I used to say that nothing could ever make me
marry an heiress, and I meant it. One generally ends by doing what one
says one will never do. A cousin of mine detested Germans and had the
most extraordinary aversion for people who had any physical defect. She
married a German who had lost the use of one leg by a wound in battle,
and was extremely lame."

"Did she love him?" asked Cecilia.

"Devotedly, to his dying day. They were the most perfectly loving couple
I ever knew."

"Would you rather I were lame than rich?" Cecilia asked, with a little
laugh.

Guido laughed too.

"That is one of those questions that have no answers. How could I wish
anything so perfect as you are to have any defect? But I will tell you a
story. An Englishman was very much in love with a lady who was lame, and
she loved him but would not marry him. She said that he should not be
tied to a cripple all his life. He was one of those magnificent
Englishmen you see sometimes, bigger and better looking than other men.
When he saw that she was in earnest he went away and scoured Europe till
he found what he wanted--a starving young surgeon who was will