They had been luxuriating for about four weeks in the art treasures collected in the Eternal City. Their eyes feasted on so much of loveliness in gazing upon living marbles and speaking forms on canvas that Vaura was often moved to a feeling akin to pain as she thought:
"Oh, the pity of it; the pity of it, that the gods among men, living, breathing men, who created these soul-stiring things should be themselves dead!"
On returning from a long ride one morning Vaura and Lionel found a gay party of callers chatting with Lady Esmondet; amongst them was Vaura's old friend, Robert Douglas. The Duchess of Wyesdale was also there; come with the avowed purpose of calling upon Lady Esmondet and making the acquaintance of Miss Vernon, but in reality to see Captain Trevalyon, whom she had watched for in vain, having expected him to call since the day they had met on the Corso. But "he cometh not," she said, was still the burden of her song, so she determined to "beard the lion in his den," though she would be obliged by so doing to become acquainted with Miss Vernon, and she was one of those women who, invariably envious of a more beautiful sister, keep them at arms' length. She could not but own to herself how beautiful Vaura was. The men raved of her, and she, the faded little dowager duchess, disliked her accordingly. She had already outstayed the bounds of politeness, but being determined to gain her point said, languidly, to her hostess:
"I really must trespass upon your kindness a little longer, dear Lady
Esmondet, I wish so much to meet Miss Vernon."
So that, as it was late when Vaura and Lionel returned, it came to pass that Saunders met her mistress at the hall door with a request from Lady Esmondet that she would come immediately to the morning-room without waiting to change her habit. So Vaura entered, gay, radiant, and with a fresh bloom upon her cheek, engendered partly by gentle caresses of the invigorating air, partly by the warmth in the looks and words of the handsome man by her side.
She made her way in answer to a look from her god-mother at once to her side, where the introduction took place.
"Her complexion is very well got up," thought the petite faded Duchess, as she bowed carelessly, and who had used tints and washes ever since her sixteenth year. "I wonder whose wash she wears," and with a conventional word or two she turned with empressement to Lionel, greeting him warmly, as Vaura crossed the room to where her old playmate sat, giving only a passing word to acquaintances.
Lady Esmondet thought, as she glanced at the Duchess of Wyesdale, roused almost to animation in her reception of Captain Trevalyon, "Lionel is the magnet that has drawn her here; she has not forgotten her old penchant for him."
On seeing his hostess disengaged a young Frenchman, wearing the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour, won by a brave act in the Franco- German war, stepped to her side; he held in his hand a volume he had been admiring,—views of the lovely lake scenery of the British Isles.
They were soon discanting warmly upon their respective beauties, and became so interested that Lady Esmondet scarcely noticed that she was bidding adieu to the fashionable butterflies who had been killing time in her presence for the last hour or two. At last they are all gone with the exception of the Duchess, who has risen to make her exit, and Robert Douglas, who is remaining to luncheon. The Duchess is just saying to Lionel: