Here, in Rome, the heat was more oppressive, and the splashing of the city’s many fountains was the only relief from the glare and dazzle of the piazzas, the whiteness of the great blocks of houses in the new streets and boulevards. Blinds were lowered, and shops were shut, in the blinding noontide heat, and through the early afternoon the eternal city was almost as silent and reposeful as the sleeping beauty--to awaken at sundown to movement, and life, and music, and singing, in lighted streets and crowded cafes. Suddenly, in the dim grey of the morning, the slumberous calm of summer changed to howling wind and tropical rain--torrential rain, that filled every gutter, and splashed from every housetop, and ran in wild cascades from every alley on the steep hillsides. The Campagna was one vast lake, illumined with flashes of lightning, and the thunder pealed and reverberated along the lofty parapets of the ruined aqueducts. The tall cypresses in the Pincian Gardens bent like saplings before that mighty wind, which seemed to howl and shriek its loudest as it came tearing down from the hill to whistle and rave among the housetops in the Piazza di Spagna. “One would think the ghost of Nero were shrieking in the midst of the tempest,” said Isola, as she listened to the fitful sobbing of the wind late in the dull grey afternoon, while her husband and Father Rodwell sat near her couch, keeping up that sad pretence of cheerfulness which love struggles to maintain upon the very edge of the grave--the brokenhearted make-believe of those who know that death waits at the door. “There comes a shrill cry every now and then like the scream of a wicked spirit in pain.” “Rome is full of ghosts,” answered the priest, “but there are the shadows of the good and the great as well as of the wicked. Walking alone in twilight on the Aventine, I should hardly be surprised to meet the spirit of Gregory the Great wandering amidst the scenes of his saintly life; nor do I ever go into the Pantheon at dusk without half expecting to see the shade of Raffaelle. And there are others--some I knew in the flesh--Wiseman and Antonelli, Gibson, the sculptor, consummate artist and gentlest of men--yes, Rome is full of the shadows of the good and the wise. One can afford to put up with Nero.” “You don’t mean me to think that you believe in ghosts?” asked Isola, deeply interested. It was only five o’clock, yet the sky was grey with the greyness of late evening. Here in this land of sunshine there had been all day long the brooding gloom of storm-clouds, and a sky that was dark as winter.