'Gwen,' he cried, coming up to her with ill-concealed anger, 'I think we'd better be going. I'm afraid--I'm afraid our presence has possibly contributed to this very unfortunate catastrophe. Good morning, Mr. Churchill. I didn't know we were to have the pleasure of meeting you here this morning. Good morning.' But Gwen wouldn't be dragged away so easily. 'Wait a minute or two, papa,' she cried in her authoritative way. 'Signor Maragliano will explain all this, and we'll go as soon as Mr. Churchill is ready to say goodbye to us. At present, you see, he's too busy with his model to pay any attention to stray visitors. I'm so sorry, Mr. Winthrop, it should have occurred while we were here, because I take so much interest in Mr. Churchill, and now I'm afraid he'll think we were all in league to raise a laugh against him. But I couldn't help it, you know; I really couldn't help it; the thing does certainly look so very comical.' Hiram hated himself for it in his heart, but he couldn't help feeling a certain sense of internal triumph in spite of himself at this unexpected discomfiture of his supposed rival. When they were walking home together a few minutes later, and had passed from the narrow street into an empty sleepy-looking piazza, the colonel turned and said angrily to his daughter, 'Gwen, I'm thoroughly ashamed of you, going and talking in that way to that common valet fellow. Have you no feeling for your position that you choose to lower yourself by actually paying court before my very eyes to a person in his station?' Gwen bit her lip in silence for a minute or two, and made no reply. Then, after letting her internal indignation cool for a while, she condescended to use the one mean Philistine argument which she thought at all likely to have any effect upon the colonel's personality. 'Papa,' she said very quietly, 'it's no use telling _you_, of course, that he's a wonderful artist, and that he's going to make beautiful statues that everybody'll admire and talk about, for you don't understand art, and you don't care for it or see anything in it: but can't you at least understand that Mr. Churchill is a gentleman by nature, that he's rising to be a gentleman by position, that he'll come at last to be a great sculptor, and be made President of the Royal Academy, and be knighted, and entertain the Prince of Wales to dinner--and then, you know, you'd be glad enough to get an invitation anywhere to meet him.' The colonel coughed. 'It'll be quite time to consider that question,' he said drily, 'when we see him duly gazetted. Every French soldier carries a marshal's bâton in his knapsack, I've been given to understand; but for my part, I prefer not sitting down to dinner with him, all the same, until the marshal's bâton has been properly taken out of the knapsack.'