in real
danger, to help him to get well."

"If you insist upon it," said the Countess, "I will go and see him
myself and take a message from you. I suppose that nobody could find
anything serious to say against me for it, though, really--I am not so
old as that, am I?"

"I think every one would think it was very kind of you to go and see
him."

"Do you? Well--perhaps--I am not sure. I never did such a thing in my
life. I am sure I should feel most uncomfortable when I found myself in
a young man's rooms. We had better send him some jelly and beef-tea. A
bachelor can never get those things."

"It would not be the same as if I could see him," said Cecilia, mildly.

Her mother did not like to admit this proposition, and disappeared soon
afterward. Without telling her daughter, she wrote an urgent note to
Lamberti begging him to come and dine and tell them all about Guido's
illness, as she and Cecilia were very anxious about him.

Cecilia went out alone with Petersen late in the hot afternoon. She
wished she could have walked the length of Rome and back, but her
companion was not equal to any such effort in the heat, so the two got
into a cab. She did not like to drive with her maid in her own carriage,
simply because she had never done it. For the first time in her life she
wished she were a man, free to go alone where she pleased, and when she
pleased. She could be alone in the house, but nowhere out of doors,
unless she went to the villa, and she was determined not to go there
again before leaving Rome. It had disagreeable associations, since she
had been obliged to sit on the bench by the fountain with Guido a few
days ago. She remembered, too, that at the very moment when his paternal
warning not to catch cold had annoyed her, he had probably caught cold
himself, and she did not know why this lowered him a little in her
estimation, but it did. She was ashamed to think that such a trifle
might have helped to make her write the letter which had hurt him so
much.

She went to the Forum, for there she could make Petersen sit down, and
could walk about a little, and nobody would care, because she should
meet no one she knew.

As they went down the broad way inside the wicket at which the tickets
are sold, she saw a party of tourists on their way to the House of the
Vestals. Of late years both Germans and Americans have discovered that
Rome is not so hot in summer as the English all say it is, and that
fever does