"Well, then, it was a fancy, Trafford, that I mistook for—" And the Duomo alone knows how the sentence was ended.
As they passed, for the third time, on their way towards the door, the mural tablet to Giotto, Morgan paused. "I have a sort of feeling that I owe it to the old fellow," he said. "I have always been his faithful disciple, and now he has rewarded me with a benediction. On the next high-festival his tablet shall be wreathed with the reddest of roses and a thick bank of heliotrope, as an acknowledgment of my gratitude."
It was; and no one ever knew why. If it had been in "the season," the inquiring tourists would have been rendered distracted by the impossibility of finding out; but to the native Florentines attending mass at the cathedral, to whom the Latin inscription, "I am he through whom the lost Art of Painting was revived," remains a blank, it was only a tribute to some "departed friend."
"And he is as much my friend as though he had not departed something over five centuries ago," said Trafford; "of that I feel convinced."
"I wonder if he knows any better, now, how to paint an angel leaning from the sky," replied Margaret.
"Have you any idea why Miss Harrison invented that enormous fiction about you?" he said, as they drove homeward.
"Not the least. We must ask her."
They found her in her easy-chair, beginning a new stocking. "I thought you were in Tadmor," she said, as Trafford came in.
"I started; but came back to ask a question. Why did you tell me that this young lady was going to be married?"
"Well, isn't she?" said Miss Harrison, laughing. "Sit down, you two, and confess your folly. Margaret has been ill all summer with absolute pining—yes, you have, child, and it is a woman's place to be humble. And you, Trafford, did not look especially jubilant, either, for a man who has been immensely amused during the same space of time. I did what I could for you by inventing a sort of neutral ground upon which you could meet and speak. It is very neutral for the other man, you know, when the girl is going to be married; he can speak to her then as well as not! I was afraid last night that you were not going to take advantage of my invention; but I see that it has succeeded (in some mysterious way out in all this rain) better than I knew. It was, I think," she concluded, as she commenced on a new needle, "a sort of experiment of mine—a Florentine experiment."