"Do you believe, Mary," she cried now, "that I could easily make up my mind never to see my dear old England again? You know that at first we did not intend to stop here a single month. For you must know, sir, that I come of an old family, and my first ancestor fell at Hastings, winning his bit of land for himself and his descendants. And so my little bit of England is as much mine as the big one of a great landowner; and who likes to leave his own behind him? And yet who knows whether I might not be induced to pass the rest of my life here, if it were not dishonourable to forget one's fatherland, even though it forgets us and the good service our forefathers have done it?"
"I do not know." answered Theodore, laughing, "you only do old England a service if you conquer a bit of Rome for yourself, and so tread in the footsteps of your forefathers."
"You are pleased to be witty!" she said, and gave him a light tap with her fan. "But even suppose that I were of an age which made your joke more appropriate, do you seriously think--supposing that there was any foundation for your innuendo, and any one should trouble himself about me,--do you think, I repeat, that English and Italian, or more properly Roman character, would in the long run, be able to get on together?"
"You know, my dear Miss Betsy, that love works wonders, fills up valleys and pulls down mountains. As far as mere character goes, I am not afraid. If the sentiments agree, what may the heart not do? I have seen more marriages rendered unhappy by difference of taste, than from difference of feeling. But what Roman would not share in your taste for everything Roman, for example?"
"You are right," she said; "at the bottom, love is a matter of taste." Then she drew her green veil over her face, and seemed to wish to be left to her own reflections.
The two young people went a little in advance, for they heard Miss Betsy beginning to talk half aloud to herself, as was often her custom, and they had no wish to overhear her dreamings. "Good creature!" said Mary, with her gentle voice; "the journey has quite unsettled her. She always used to have strange ideas, but in England they took an innocent political direction; but with her first step on the continent arose this strange fancy of inventing experiences, which has already indeed given us much anxiety on the journey, but which has perhaps as often afforded an excuse for a hearty laugh."
"This fantastic state of being must have suited her charmingly when she was younger," said Theodore; "older people generally discover that they have quite enough to do to meet adventures as they happen, and are by no means inclined to seek them. It is to be hoped that she will soon be as little in earnest with her new Roman friend, as he seems to have been with her from the beginning."
"I saw them both returning home. He was a good-looking man, with rather insolent, but still fine eyes, and much younger than she is."
"What restrained you from giving an opinion on the question which Miss Betsy proposed?" asked Theodore, after a pause.
"Which one?"