Marcia was the next morning by Bianca knocking at the door, with the information that Gervasio wished to get up, and that, as his clothes were very , she had taken the liberty the night before of throwing them away.  
For an instant Marcia blinked uncomprehendingly; then, as the events of the evening flashed through her mind, she sat up in bed, and clasping her knees in her hands, considered the problem. She felt, and not without reason, that Gervasio’s future success at the depended largely on the impression he made at this, his first formal appearance. She finally dispatched Bianca to try him with one of Gerald’s suits, and to be very sure that his face was clean. Meanwhile she hurried through with her own in order to be the first to inspect his .
 
As she was putting the last touches to her hair she heard a of voices on the terrace, and peering out cautiously, her uncle and Sybert lounging on the parapet engaged with cigarettes. She had not been dreaming, then; those were Sybert’s steps she had heard the night before. She her brow over the puzzle and peered out again. Whatever had happened last night, there was nothing electrical in the air this morning. The two had 100 shoved all inflammable subjects behind them and were merely waiting idly until coffee should be served.
 
It was a beautifully peaceful spring morning that she looked out upon. The two men on the terrace appeared to be in mood with the day—careless, indifferent loungers, nothing more. And last night? She recalled their low, fierce, angry tones; and the lines in her forehead deepened. This was a world, she thought. As she stood watching them, Gervasio for the moment forgotten, Gerald ran up to the two with some childish which called a quick, amused laugh. Sybert stretched out a lazy hand and drew the boy toward him. Carefully balancing his cigarette on the edge of one of the terra-cotta vases, he rose to his feet and tossed the little fellow in the air four or five times. Gerald screamed with delight and called for more. Sybert laughingly declined, as he resumed his cigarette and his seat on the balustrade.
 
The little play recalled Marcia to her duty. With a shake of her head at matters in general, she gave them up, and turned her face toward Gervasio’s quarters. Bianca was on her knees before the boy, giving the last touches to his sailor tie, and she turned him slowly around for . His appearance was even more than Marcia had hoped for. With his dark curls still damp from their unwonted ablutions, clad in one of Gerald’s sailor-suits of red with a white collar and tie, except for his bare feet (which would not be forced into Gerald’s shoes) he might have been a little princeling himself, backed by a hundred noble ancestors.
 
Marcia sank down on her knees beside him. ‘You little dear!’ she exclaimed as she kissed him.
 
Gervasio was not used to , and for a moment he drew back, his brown eyes growing wide with wonder. Then a smile broke over his face, and he reached out a timid hand and patted her on the cheek. She kissed him again in pure delight, and taking him by the hand, set out forthwith for the loggia.
 
‘Ecco! my friends. Isn’t he beautiful?’ she demanded.
 
Mr. Copley and Sybert sprang to their feet and came forward interestedly.
 
101 ‘Who denies now that it’s clothes that make the man?’
 
‘I can’t say but that he was as last night,’ her uncle returned; ‘but he’s cleaner this morning.’
 
‘Where’s Gerald?’ asked Sybert. ‘Let’s see what he has to say of the new arrival.’
 
Gerald, who had but just discovered Marcellus, was delightedly in the garden with him, and was dragged away under protest and confronted with the stranger. He examined him in silence a moment and then remarked, ‘He’s got my on.’ And suddenly, as a terrible idea dawned upon him, he burst out: ‘Is he a new bruvver? ‘Cause if he is you can take him away.’
 
‘Oh, my dear!’ his mother in horror. ‘He’s a little Italian boy.’
 
Gerald was visibly relieved. He examined Gervasio again from this new point of view.
 
‘I want to go wifout my shoes and socks,’ he declared.
 
‘Oh, but he’s going to wear shoes and socks, too, as soon we can get some to fit him,’ said Marcia.
 
‘Do you want to see my lizhyards?’ Gerald asked , suddenly making up his mind and pulling Gervasio by the sleeve.
 
Gervasio backed away.
 
‘You must talk to him in Italian, Gerald,’ Sybert suggested. ‘He’s like Marietta: he doesn’t understand anything else. I should like to have another look at those myself,’ he added. ‘Come on, Gervasio,’ and taking a boy by each hand, he strode off toward the fountain.
 
Mrs Copley looked after them , but Marcia interposed, ‘He’s a dear little fellow, Aunt Katherine, and it will be good for Gerald to have some one to play with.’
 
‘Marcia’s right, Katherine; it won’t hurt him any, and I doubt if the boy’s Italian is much worse than Bianca’s.’
 
Thus Gervasio’s formal installation at the villa. For the first week or so his principal activity was eating, until he was in the way of becoming as rosy-cheeked as Gerald himself. During the early stages of his career he was to the kitchen, where François served him 102 with soup and macaroni to the point of bursting. Later, having learned to a knife and fork without disaster, he was advanced to the nursery, where he supped with Gerald under the eye of Granton.
 
Taken all in all, Gervasio proved a valuable addition to the household. He was sweet-tempered, eager to please, and pitifully grateful for the slightest kindness. He became Gerald’s faithful henchman and obeyed his commands, with only an occasional rebellion when they were over-oppressive. He was quick to learn, and it was not long before he was in a mixture of Italian and English with a vocabulary nearly as as Gerald’s own.
 
The first week following Gervasio’s was a period of comparative quiet at the villa, but one fairly disturbing little contretemps occurred to break the monotony.
 
The boy had been promised a reward of sweet chocolate as soon as he should learn to wear shoes and stockings with a smiling face—shoes and stockings being, in his eyes, an objectionable feature of civilization. When it came time for payment, however, Marcia discovered that there was no sweet chocolate in the house, and, not to disappoint him, she ordered Gerald’s -carriage, and taking with her the two boys and a , set out for Castel Vivalanti and the baker’s. Had she stopped to think, she would have known that to take Gervasio to Castel Vivalanti in broad daylight was not a wise . But it was a frequent characteristic of the Copleys that they did their thinking . The spectacle of Gervasio Delano in a carriage with the principino, and in new clothes, with his face washed, very nearly occasioned a mob among his former playmates. The carriage was , and Marcia found it necessary to distribute a considerable largess of before she could rid herself of her following.
 
As she laughingly escaped from the crowd and drove out through the a man stepped forward from the corner of the wall and motioned her to stop. For a moment a remembrance of her aunt’s rencontre with the Camorrist flashed through her mind, and then she smiled as she reflected that it was broad daylight and in full sight of the town. She pulled the pony to a standstill and 103 asked him what he wanted. He was Gervasio’s stepfather, he said. They were poor, hard-working people and did not have enough to eat, but they were very lonely without the boy and wished to have him back. Even American princes, he added, couldn’t take poor people’s children away without their permission. And he finished by that if he were paid enough he might reconsider the matter.
 
Marcia did not understand all that he said, but as Gervasio began to cry, and at the same time clasped both hands firmly about the seat in an evident determination to resist all efforts to dislodge him, she saw what he meant, and replied that she would tell the police. But the man evidently thought that he had the upper hand of the situation, and that she would rather buy him off than let the boy go. With a threatening air, he reached out and grasped Gervasio roughly by the arm. Gervasio screamed, and Marcia, before she thought of possible consequences, struck the man a sharp blow with the whip and at the same time the pony into a . They dashed down the road and around the corners at a rate, while the man shouted curses from the top of the hill.
 
They reached the villa still bubbling with excitement over the adventure, and caused Mrs. Copley no little alarm. But when Marcia greeted her uncle’s arrival that night with the story, he declared that she had done just right; and without waiting for dinner, he remounted his horse, and back to Castel Vivalanti, rode straight up to the door of the little trattoria, where the fellow was engaged in drinking wine and cursing Americans. There he told him, before an interested group of witnesses, that Gervasio was not his child; that since he could not treat him decently he had all claim to him; and that if he tried to any further he would find himself in prison. Wherewith he wheeled his horse’s head about and made a spectacular exit from the town. If anything were needed to strengthen Gervasio’s position with Mr. Copley, this incident answered the purpose.
 
As a result of the adventure, Marcia, for the time, dropped Castel Vivalanti from her calling-list and extended her acquaintance in the other direction. She came to be well known as she about the country-side on a satin-coated little sorrel (born and bred in Kentucky), 104 followed by a groom on a cob, who always respectfully drew up behind her when she stopped. As often as she could think of any excuse, she visited the peasants in their houses, laughing with them over her own queer grammar. It was an amused curiosity which at first actuated her . Their ingenious comments and naïve questions in regard to America proved an ever-diverting source of interest; but after a little, as she understood them better, she grew to like them for their own . When she looked about their gloomy little rooms, with almost no furnishing except a few copper pots and kettles and a tawdry picture of the Madonna, and saw what meagre, straitened lives they led, and yet how bravely they bore them, her amusement changed to respect. Their quick sympathy and warm friendliness awakened an answering spark, and it was not long before she had discovered for herself the lovable charm of the Italian peasant.
 
She explored, in the course of her rides, many a forgotten little mountain village topping a barren crag of the Sabines, and held by some Roman prince in almost the same as a thousand years ago. They were picturesque enough from below, these grey-stone hamlets shooting up from the solid rock; but when she had climbed the steeply path and had looked within, she found them and beyond belief. She was coming to see the under side of a great deal of .
 
Meanwhile, though life was moving in an even at Villa Vivalanti, the same could not be said of the rest of Italy. Each day brought fresh reports of rioting throughout the southern provinces, and travellers hurrying north reported that every town of any size was under law. In spite of newspaper articles, written under the eye of the police, it was evident that affairs were fast approaching a crisis. There was not much anxiety felt in the neighbourhood of Rome, for the capital was too great a stronghold of the army to be in actual danger from mobs. The affair, if anything, was regarded as a welcome diversion from the tediousness of Lent, and the embassies and large hotels where the 105 foreigners were by a not unpleasurable air of excitement.
 
Conflicting opinions of every sort were current. Some shook their heads wisely, and said that in their opinion the matter was much more serious than appeared on the surface. They should not be surprised to see the scenes of the French Commune over again; and they intimated further, that since it had to happen, they were very willing to be on hand in time to see the fun.
 
Many expressed the belief that the trouble had nothing to do with the price of bread; the wheat famine was merely a for stirring up the people. It was well known that the universities, the younger generation of writers and newspaper men, even the ranks of the army, were with socialism. What more likely than that the and the church had united to the government, intending as soon as their end was to turn upon each other and fight it out for ? It was the opinion of these that the government should have adopted the most drastic measures possible, and was doing very foolishly in to the populace by putting down the dazio. Still others held that the government should have abolished the dazio long before, and that the people in the south did very well to rise and demand their rights. And so the affairs of the unfortunate Neapolitans were the subject of conversation at every table d’hôte in Rome; and the forestieri sojourning within the walls a large amount of entertainment from the matter.
 
Marcia Copley, however, had heard little of the trouble. She did not read the papers, and her uncle did not mention the matter at home. He was too sick at heart to dwell on it uselessly, and it was not a subject he cared to discuss with his niece. His family, indeed, saw very little of him, for he had thrown himself into the work of the Foreign Relief Committee with characteristic energy, and he spent the most of his time in Rome. Marcia’s interest in sight-seeing had come to a sudden halt since the afternoon of Tre Fontane. She had ventured into the city only once, and then merely to attend to the purchase of clothes for Gervasio. The Roystons, on that occasion, had been out when she called at their hotel, and her 106 feeling of regret was largely with relief as she left her card and in safety to Villa Vivalanti.
 
She had not analysed her emotions very , but she felt a at the thought of seeing Paul. The trepidation, however, was not altogether an unpleasant sensation. The scene in the had returned to her mind many times, and she had taken several brief excursions into the future. What would he say the next time they met? Would he renew the same subject, or would he tacitly overlook that afternoon, and for the time let everything be as it had been before? She hoped that the latter would be the case. It would give a certain to their relations, and she was not ready—just at present—to make up her mind.
 
Paul, on his side, had also pondered the question somewhat. Events were not moving with the rapidity he wished. Marcia, evidently, would not come into Rome, and he could think of no excuse for going out to the villa. His pessimistic forecast of events had proved true. Holy Week found the Roystons still in the city, treating themselves to orgies of church-going. As he followed his aunt from church to church (there are in the neighbourhood of three hundred and seventy-five in Rome, and he says they visited them all that week) he indulged in many as to the state of Marcia’s mind in regard to himself. At times he feared he had been over-; at others, that he had not been precipitate enough.
 
His aunt and cousins returned from a flying visit to the villa, with the report that Marcia had adopted a boy and a dog and was solicitously engaged with their education. ‘What did she say about me, Madge?’ Paul boldly inquired.
 
‘She said you were a very fellow,’ Margaret retorted; and in response to his somewhat startled expression she added more magnanimously: ‘You needn’t be so vain as to think she said anything about you. She never even mentioned your name.’
 
Paul breathed a ‘Ah!’ Marcia had not mentioned his name. It was not such a bad sign, that: she was thinking about him, then. If there were no other man—and he was vain enough to take her at her word—nothing 107 could be better for his cause than a week in the Sabine hills. He knew from present—and past—experience that an Italian spring is a powerful for the heart.
 
On Tuesday of Holy Week Mrs. Royston wakened slightly from her spiritual trance to observe that she had scarcely seen Marcia for as much as a week, and that as soon as Lent was over they must have the Copleys in to at the hotel.
 
‘Where’s the use of waiting till Lent’s over?’ Paul had inquired. ‘You needn’t make it a function. Just a sort of—family affair. If you invite them for Thursday, we can all go together to the tenebræ service at St. Peter’s. As this is Miss Copley’s first Easter in Rome, she might be interested.&............