* * * * * Next time Aurora saw Gerald--it was on Viale Principe Amedeo--she waved to him. He did not see it. He was just aware of a victoria coming down the middle of the street he was preparing to cross and of something fluttering, but that it concerned him he did not suspect. Then suddenly the victoria, like a huge Jack-in-the-box, shot up a figure, and he recognized Mrs. Hawthorne standing at full height in the moving carriage, and waving both hands, as he must suppose, nobody else being near,--to him. He lifted his hat. He saw her reach for the coachman and by touch make him aware that she wished to stop. The horses were pulled up. Mrs. Hawthorne, from the seat into which the jerk had thrown her, made beckoning signs to him, laughing the while, and calling, "Mr. Fane! Mr. Fane!" He went to stand at the carriage-step. "I thought," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "that you were going to come and take us sight-seeing." "I thought I was," said Gerald, with that scant smile of his; "but I was not so fortunate as to find you at home." It was true that he had gone to her door one afternoon, having previously caught a glimpse of her in the heart of the city, shopping. "You mean to say you came?" "You did not find my card?" "No; but it's all right. This is Miss Madison--Mr. Fane. We are together. What have you got to do?" Gerald looked as if the question had not been quite clear, and he waited for some amplification of it before he could answer. "Have you got anything very important to do? Aren't you lonesome? Don't you want to jump in and come home with us? Wish you would." Gerald smiled again in his remote way, and looked as if he knew, as any one would know, that this was not meant to be taken seriously. "I have just seen a beautiful spectacle," he said, after a vague head-shake that thanked her shadowily for an unreal invitation. "A game of _pallone_, which is the nearest to your football that boys have over here. Beautiful bronzed athletes at exercise, a delightful sight, statues in motion. I go to see them whenever I can.--The days are becoming very short, are they not?" "Yes. Jump in and come home with us. Tell you what we'll do. I'll go down into the kitchen and make some soda biscuits that we'll have hot for supper--with maple syrup. We've had a big box of sugar come." Gerald again smiled his civil, but joyless, smile, and after another vague head-shake that thanked, but eluded the question, he said: "They are very indigestible; hot bread is not good for the health. At least, that is what they tell us over here. We keep our bread two days before eating it, or longer. But I am afraid I am detaining you." The horses were jingling their bits, frisking their docked tails. The driver, checking their restless attempts to start, was giving them smothered thunder in Italian. Gerald withdrew by a step from the danger to his shins.