On the Lungarno in Florence, in the cool of the evening, we walked together, the Senator, momma, Dicky, and I. Dicky radiated depression, if such a thing is atmospherically possible; we all moved in it. Mr. Dod had been banished from the Portheris party, and he groaned over the reflection that it was his own fault. At Pompeii I had exerted myself in his interest to such an extent that Mr. Mafferton detached himself from Mrs. Portheris and attached himself to momma for the drive home. Little did I realise that one could be too agreeable in a good cause. Dicky insinuated himself with difficulty into Mr. Mafferton\'s vacant place opposite Mrs. Portheris, and even before the carriages started I saw that he was going to have a bad time. His own version of the experience was painful in the extreme, and he represented the climax as having occurred just as they arrived at the hotel. The unfortunate youth must have been goaded to his fate, for his general attitude toward matters of orthodoxy was most discreet.

"There is something Biblical," said Mrs. Portheris (so Dicky related), "that those Pompeiian remains remind me of, and I cannot think what it is."

"Lot\'s wife, mamma?" said Isabel.

"Quite right, my child—what a memory you have! That wretched woman who stopped to look back at the city where careless friends and relatives were enjoying themselves, indifferent to their coming fate, in direct disobedience to the command. Of course, she turned to salt, and these people to ashes, but she must have looked very much like them when the process was completed."

That was Dicky\'s opportunity for restraint and submission, but he seemed to have been physically unable to take it. He rushed, instead, blindly to perdition. "I don\'t believe that yarn," he said.

There was a moment\'s awful silence, during which Dicky said he counted his heart-beats and felt as if he had announced himself an atheist or a Jew, and then his sentence fell.

"In that case, Mr. Dod, I must infer that you are opposed to the doctrine of the complete inspiration of Holy Writ. If you do not believe in that, I shudder to think of what you may not believe in. I will say no more now, but after dinner I will be obliged to speak to you for a few minutes, privately. Thank you, I can get out without assistance."

And after dinner, privately, Dicky learned that Mrs. Portheris had for some time been seriously considering the effect of his, to her, painfully flippant views, upon the opening mind of her daughter—the child had only been out six months—and that his distressing announcement of this morning left her in no further doubt as to her path of duty. She would always endeavour to have as kindly a recollection of him as possible, he had really been very obliging, but for the present she must ask him to make some other travelling arrangements. Cook, she believed, would always change one\'s tickets less ten per cent., but she would leave that to Dicky. And she hoped, she sincerely hoped, that time would improve his views. When that was accomplished she trusted he would write and tell her, but not before.

"And while I\'m getting good and ready to pass an examination in Noah, Jonah, and Methuselah," remarked Dicky bitterly, as we discussed the situation on the Lungarno for the seventh time that day, "Mafferton sails in."

"Why didn\'t you tell her plainly that you wanted to marry Isabel, and would brook no opposition?" I demanded, for my stock of sympathy was getting low.

"Now that\'s a valuable suggestion, isn\'t it?" returned Mr. Dod with sarcasm. "Good old psychological moment that was, wasn\'t it? Talk about girls having tact! Besides, I\'ve never told Isabel herself yet, and I\'m not the American to give in to the effete and decaying custom of asking a girl\'s poppa, or momma if it\'s a case of widow, first. Not Richard Dod."

"What on earth," I exclaimed, "have you been doing all this time?"

"Now go slow, Mamie, and don\'t look at me like that. I\'ve been trying to make her acquainted with me—explaining the kind of fellow I am—getting solid with her. See?"

"Showing her the beauties of your character!" I exclaimed derisively.

"I said something about the defects, too," said Dicky modestly, "though not so much. And I was getting on beautifully, though it isn\'t so easy with an English girl. They don\'t seem to think it\'s proper to analyse your character. They\'re so maidenly."

"And so unenterprising," I said, but I said it to myself.

"Isabel was actually beginning to lead up to the subject," Dicky went on. "She asked me the other day if it was true that all American men were flirts. In another week I should have felt that she would know what was proposing to her."

"And you were going to wait another week?"

"Well, a man wants every advantage," said Dicky blandly.

"Did you explain to Isabel that you were only joining our party in the hope of meeting her accidentally soon again?"

"What else," asked he in pained surprise, "should I have joined it for? No, I didn\'t; I hadn\'t the chance, for one thing. You took the first train back to Rome next morning, you know. She wasn\'t up."

"True," I responded. "Momma said not another hour of her husband\'s Aunt Caroline would she ever willingly endure. She said she would spend her entire life, if necessary, in avoiding the woman." But Dicky had not followed the drift of my thought.

I added vaguely, "I hope she will understand it"—I really couldn\'t be more definite—and bade Mr. Dod good-night. He held my hand absent-mindedly for a moment, and mentioned the effectiveness of the Ponte Vecchio from that point of view.

"I didn\'t feel bound to change my tickets less ten per cent.," he said hopefully, "and we\'re sure to come across them early and often. In the meantime you might try and soften me a little—about Lot\'s wife."

Next day, in the Ufizzi, it was no surprise to meet the Miss Binghams. We had a guilty consciousness of fellow-citizenship as we recognised them, and did our best to look as if two weeks were quite long enough to be forgotten in, but they seemed charitable and forgiving on this account, said they had looked out for us everywhere, and had we seen the cuttings in the Vatican?

"The statues, you know," explained Miss Cora kindly, seeing that we did not comprehend. "Marvellous—simply marvellous! We enjoyed nothing so much as the marble department. It takes it out of you though—we were awfully done afterwards."

I wondered what Phidias would have said to the "cuttings," and whether the Miss Binghams imagined it a Briticism. It also occurred to me that one should never mix one\'s colloquialisms; but that, of course, did not prevent their coming round with us. I believe they did it partly to diffuse their guide among a larger party. He was hanging, as they came up, upon Miss Cora\'s reluctant earring, so to speak, and she was mechanically saying, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" to his representations. "I suppose," said she inadvertently, "there is no way of preventing their giving one information," and after that when she hospitably pressed the guide upon us we felt at liberty to be unappreciative.

I regret to write it of two maiden ladies of good New York family, and a knowledge of the world; but the Miss Binghams capitulated to Dicky Dod with a promptness and unanimity which would have been very bad for him if nobody had been there to counteract its effects. He walked between them through the vestibules, absorbing a flow of tribute from each side with a complacency which his recent trying experiences made all the more profound. There was always a something, Miss Nancy declared, about an American who had made his home in England—you could always tell. "In your case, Mr. Dod, there is an association of Bond Street. I can\'t describe it, but it is there. I hope you don\'t mind my saying so."

"Oh, no," said Dicky, "I guess it\'s my tailor. He lives in Bond Street;" but this was artless and not ironical. Miss Cora went further. "I should have taken Mr. Dod for an Englishman," she said, at which the miscalculated Mr. Dod looked alarmed.

"Is that so?" he responded. "Then I\'ll book my passage back at once. I\'ve been over there too long. You see I\'ve been kind of obliged to stay for reasons connected with the firm, but you ladies can take my word for it that when you get through this sort of ............