Stella Rawson woke the next day with some sense of rebellion. There came with the rest of her post a letter from her betrothed. And although it was just such a letter as any nice girl engaged of her own free will to the Bishop's junior chaplain ought to have been glad to receive, Stella found herself pouting and criticizing every sentence.
"I do wish Eustace would not talk such cant," she said to herself. "Even in this he is unable to be natural—and I am sure I shall not feel a thing like he describes when I stand in St. Peter's. I believe I would rather go into the Pantheon. I seem to be tired of everything I ought to like to-day!" And still rebellious she got up and was taken by her uncle and aunt to the Vatican—and was allowed to linger only in the parts which interested them.
"I never have had a taste for sculpture," Mrs. Ebley said. "People may call it what names they please, but I consider it immoral and indecent."
"A wonder to me," the Uncle Erasmus joined in, "that a prelate—even a prelate of Rome—should have countenanced the housing of all these unclothed marbles in his own private palace."
Stella Rawson stopped for a second in front of an archaic Apollo of no great merit—because it reminded her of the unknown; and she wished with all her might something new and swift and rushing might come into her humdrum life.
After luncheon, for which they returned to the hotel, she wearily went over to the writing-table in the corner of the hall to answer her lover's chaste effusion—and saw that the low armchair beside the escritoire was tenanted by a pair of long legs with singularly fine silk socks showing upon singularly fine ankles—and a pair of strong slender hands held a newspaper in front of the rest of the body, concealing it all and the face. It was the English TIMES, which, as everybody knows, could hide Gargantua himself.
She began her letter—and not a rustle disturbed her peace.
"Dearest Eustace," she had written, "we have arrived in Rome—" and then she stopped, and fixed her eyes blankly upon the column of births, marriages, and deaths. She was staring at it with sightless eyes, when the paper was slowly lowered and over its top the blue orbs of the stranger looked into hers.
Her pretty color became the hue of a bright pink rose. "Mademoiselle," a very deep voice said in English, "is not this world full of bores and tiresome duties; have you the courage to defy them all for a few minutes—and talk to me instead?"
"Monsieur!" Miss Rawson burst out, and half rose from her seat. Then she sat down again—the unknown had not stirred a muscle.