Léon looked graver still. He turned to Rose. “And you, Mademoiselle,” he asked, “were you under the impression that you saw me?”
“It certainly did look exactly like you,” Mrs. Pinsent murmured, looking rather troubled. “I particularly noticed the hat.”
“Lots of people wear hats like Monsieur Legier,” Rose said, looking away from Léon.
She was the only one of the party he finally failed to convince.
He did more than admire her then, he respected her. There is no taste so perfect as that which permanently conceals a fact which is awkward for others.
Rose concealed it, but she paid for her good taste by her tears.
CHAPTER IV
Léon planned in advance the setting for his proposal. He would make it in the English way, to the girl herself. Léon had never proposed marriage before, and he gave the affair his best attention.
The Baths of Caracalla are never very crowded and at certain times of the day they are extraordinarily solitary.
Léon knew one of the chief excavators and it was part of his idea to take the entire family of Pinsent with the exception of Rose into the underground regions. The excavator, who was an enthusiast, could be calculated to hold them there for a full hour. Rose, who never liked underground temples, agreed easily enough to remain in the open air, and Léon disappeared with the others. She was a little puzzled over Baedeker’s description of the Baths of Caracalla, once she got the tepidarium in her head she felt she could get on quite easily, but the tepidarium eluded her. The great roofless, sunny space, wouldn’t contract itself reasonably, into a guide book, and then she heard Léon’s returning footsteps.