The next day—it was just a week before their proposed trip to the Tyrol—Marcia accompanied her uncle into Rome for the sake of one or two important errands which might not be intrusted to a man’s uncertain memory. Mr. Copley found himself unready to return to the on the train they had planned to take, and, somewhat to Marcia’s , he carried her off to the Embassy for tea. She mounted the steps with a fast-beating heart. Would Laurence Sybert be there? She had not so much as seen him since the night of her birthday ball, and the thought of facing him before a crowd, with no chance to explain away that awful moment by the fountain, was more than disconcerting.  
Her first glance about the room assured her that he was not in it, and the knowledge carried with it a feeling of relief and disappointment. The air was filled with an excited buzz of conversation, the talk being all of riots and 205 of riots. Marcia drifted from one group to another, and finally found herself sitting on a window-seat beside a woman whose face was familiar, but whom for the moment she could not place.
 
‘You don’t remember me, Miss Copley?’ her companion smiled.
 
Marcia looked puzzled. ‘I was trying to place you,’ she confessed. ‘I remember your face.’
 
‘One day, early this spring, at Mr. Dessart’s studio——’
 
‘To be sure! The lady who writes!’ she laughed. ‘I never caught your name.’
 
‘And the worst gossip in Rome? Ah, well, they me, Miss Copley. One is naturally interested in the lives of the people one is interested in—but for the others! They may make their fortunes and lose them again, and get married, and elope and die, for all the attention I ever give.’
 
Marcia smiled at her summary of the activities of life, and put her down as a Frenchwoman.
 
‘And the villa in the hills?’ she asked. ‘How did it go? And the ghost of the Wicked Prince? Did Monsieur Benoit paint him?’
 
‘The ghost was a grievous disappointment. He turned out to be the butler.’
 
‘Ah—poor Monsieur Benoit! He has many disappointments. C’est triste, n’est-ce pas?’
 
‘Many disappointments?’ Marcia, quite in the dark.
 
‘The Miss Roystons, Mr. Dessart’s relatives,’ pursued the lady; ‘they are friends of yours. I met them at the Melvilles’ a few weeks ago. They are charming, are they not?’
 
‘Very,’ said Marcia, wondering slightly at the turn the conversation had taken.
 
‘And this poor Monsieur Benoit—he has gone, all alone, to paint moonlight in Venice. Ce que c’est que l’amour!’
 
‘Ah!’ breathed Marcia. She was beginning to have an inkling. Had he been added to the collection? It was too bad of Eleanor!
 
‘Miss Royston is charming, like all Americans,’ the lady. ‘But, I fear, a little cruel. Mais n’importe. He is young, and when one is young one’s heart is made of india-rubber, is it not so?’ Her eyes rested on Marcia for a moment.
 
206 Marcia’s glance had wandered toward the door. Laurence Sybert had just come in and joined the group about her uncle, and she the fact with a quick thrill of excitement. Would he come and speak to her? What would he say? How would he act? She felt a strong desire to study his face, but she was aware that the eyes of ‘the greatest gossip in Rome’ were upon her, and she rallied herself to answer. Monsieur Benoit was for the third time.
 
‘Ah, well,’ finished the lady, , ‘perhaps it is for the best. A young man avec le cœur brisé is far more interesting than one who is heart-whole. There is that Laurence Sybert over there.’ She nodded toward the group on the other side of the room. ‘For the last ten years, when the forestieri in Rome haven’t had anything else to talk about, they’ve talked about him. And all because they think that under that manner of his he’s carrying around a broken heart for the pretty little Contessa Torrenieri.’
 
Marcia laughed lightly. ‘Mr. Sybert at least carries his broken heart easily. One would never suspect its presence.’
 
The lady’s eyes rested upon her an instant before she answered: ‘Che vuole? People must have something to talk about, and a good many girls—yes, and with dots—have sighed in vain for a smile from his dark eyes. Between you and me, I don’t believe the man’s got any heart—either broken or whole. But I mustn’t be him,’ she laughed. ‘I remember he’s a friend at Casa Copley.’
 
‘Mr. Sybert is my uncle’s friend; the rest of us see very little of him,’ Marcia returned as she endeavoured to think of a new theme. Her companion, however, saved her the trouble.
 
‘And were you not surprised at Mr. Dessart’s desertion?’
 
‘Mr. Dessart’s desertion?’ Marcia repeated the question with a slight quiver of the .
 
‘Exchanging Rome for Pittsburg. You Americans do things so suddenly! One loses one’s breath.’
 
‘But his father was ill and they sent for him.’
 
‘Yes; but the surprising part is that he goes for good. The pictures and and curios are packed; there is a card in the window saying the studio is for rent—he is giving up art to mine coal instead.’
 
207 Marcia laughed. ‘It is a seven-league step from art to coal,’ she acknowledged. ‘I had thought myself that he was ............