Or, I’ll see Florence at night and Harlequins and Juliets and Romeos, or wide sombreroed Spaniards walking beside Egyptian Princesses, or some girl in the costume of Normandy with a sweetheart in clanking armor; for in Florence there are many masked balls after Christmas, and at night one may see the people who go to these strolling along in the best of good humors, and daring all sorts of things because of the protection given them by their disguise. Paper rose leaves were tossed in the air, every pretty girl was spoken to, and there was lots of laughter, and the nicest sort of fun. . . . I, myself, felt that grim Florence must be pleased, for the city of Florence is built to back brilliant costumes, and not the tweeds and serges that she sees most. I wondered, as I looked one night when I was out with Mr. Wake and Sam, whether ghosts in satins and brocades, the ghosts of brides who had ridden all over Florence on snow white chargers before their weddings, whether these ghosts weren’t, perhaps, mingling in the throng. . . . Mr. Wake thought they were, and after I spoke of my feelings, he pointed out to me, a ghost named Vanna Tornabuoni, who, because she had been wicked, saw in her mirror instead of her fair face that of the horned devil! And she therefore went to confession immediately--in Santa Maria Novella, if I’m not mistaken--and began a new and a better life. And all this was pleasing and most fascinating, but as I said, it made work difficult even for me, and for Viola--who swayed with any wind--work stopped. Even Signor Paggi’s most bitter scorn didn’t do anything but make her weep. “I’m sick of it anyway,” she confided to me just before New Year’s day. “I wish now I’d listened to Father and never come--” “Didn’t he want you to?” I asked. “No--the old objection, money. But I was wild over being with Leslie then, and I persuaded him. Now--” (She drew rings on her blotters; I had dropped into her room to find her writing) “now, I wish I had listened to him.” I didn’t say anything; there wasn’t very much to say. “About to-morrow,” she went on--I had come in to tell her that Mr. Wake asked us to go with him to a monastery called Certosa, on the following afternoon--“about to-morrow, I don’t know. But I don’t _believe_ I’ll go this time. I saw a frock and a blouse in a shop on the Lungarno, and I thought that, if I could make the woman listen to reason, I’d take them both. She is asking about forty dollars in our money for the frock, but I think she’ll come down. I’m positively in _rags_, and I planned to go out about the time Mr. Wake wants us to start. I’m awfully keen to get that frock--” (She never did--something kept her from even wanting it--but of that, later) “Can’t you shop in the morning?” I asked.