Mrs. Grey herself was lying upon the sofa in the most charmingly artistic costume and attitude; and the injured manner she assumed rather added to her fascination. She idolized her only brother; and when, after a short wedded happiness of two years, he had offered the childless widow a home with him, she had gladly accepted; and after a few months of becoming weeds and retirement, she was so far consoled as to mitigate her crape, and allow her brother's visitors to gaze from a distance upon her charms. The mitigating process had gone on until she was now the gayest of the gay, except when an occasional headache reminded her that she was mortal, and others that amiability is not to be found in perfection in this world any more than any other virtue. She was too frivolous to satisfy her brother's deeper nature, but he was as fond of her as her affection for him deserved. She had taken the orphan Assunta into her heart as if she had been a sister; though she insisted that the position of matron to a beautiful young girl was no sinecure.
“Really, Severn,” she exclaimed, as he seated himself beside the sofa, “you must have thought it very entertaining for me to stay alone five mortal hours with only my poor head for company.”
“Dear Clara, if I had dreamed you would be doomed to such a dearth of companionship, I should not have gone at all.”
“Hush! No impertinence,” she said. “Where have you left Assunta?”
“Here I am,” said the young girl, entering the room at the same moment, and answering for herself. “And how is your head, Clara? I hope you have not been suffering all this time.”
“Your sympathy is very pretty and pleasing, Assunta; but, indeed, it is of too mushroom a growth to be very consoling. Confess that this is the first time I have been in your thoughts since you left the house. But,” she exclaimed, suddenly recollecting herself, “you have been out alone all this time. Dear me! I hope you did not meet any one you knew, for what would they think? Where have you been?” And as she spoke, she rose from the couch, and went about the womanly occupation of making tea.
“We went to the Colosseum,” replied her brother; “and truly the night was so lovely that if it had not been for you and your head, who knows but we might have wandered about until the Roman police lighted upon us, and committed us to the care of the Holy Office as vagabonds?”
“Nonsense! I would risk you with Assunta anywhere, as far as that is concerned. She is Papal protection in herself. She is wrapped about in the yellow and white, metaphorically speaking. Besides, I believe it is not exactly the province of the Holy Office to deal with vagabonds, but with heretics.”
“And what am I?”
“Oh! I don't know anything about religion. Has Assunta been calling you a heretic?”