"Well, she's engaged," said Mrs. Copley. "I wish you were. You let everything hang by the eyelids, Dolly; and some fine morning what you look for won't be there."
CHAPTER XXV.
CHRISTMAS EVE.
Christmas Eve came, and Rupert attended Dolly to the Piazza di Spagna, where her friends had apartments in a great hotel. Dolly was quite prepared to enjoy herself; the varied delights of the foregoing days had lifted her out of the quiet, patient mood of watchful endurance which of late had been chronic with her, and her spirits were in a flow and stir more fitted to her eighteen years. She was going through the streets of Rome! the forms of the ages rose before her mind's eye continually, and before her bodily eye appeared here and there tokens and remains which were like the crumblings of those ages; tangible proofs that once they had been, and that Rome was still Rome. Dolly drew breaths of pleasure as she and Rupert walked along.
"You are going to stay all night?" said Rupert.
"Yes, they want me."
"And they have asked nobody but you?" said Rupert, who was not conventional.
"They wanted nobody but me. It is not a party; it is my old school-friend only, who wants to show me her future husband."
Rupert grunted his intelligence, and at the same time his mystification. "What for?" he asked. And Dolly laughed.