"I consider the place made from this hour," said the doctor, rubbing his well-shaped white hands in a prophetic rapture. "There will be paragraphs in all the Roman papers, and it will be my business to see that they get into the _New York Herald_. We must boom our pretty little San Marco, my dear Lady Felicia. Your coming here was good luck, for we want our English aristocracy to take us up--but all over the world Mario Provana's is a name to conjure with; and if his daughter can recover her health here, we shall make San Marco as big as San Remo before we are many years older. It was my wife's delicate chest that brought me here, and I have been rewarded by the beauty of the place and, I think I may venture to say, the influential position that I have obtained here." He might have added that his villa and garden cost him about half the rent he would have had to pay in San Remo or Mentone, while a clever manager like Mrs. Wilmot could make a superior figure in San Marco on economical terms. "How old is the girl?" Lady Felicia asked languidly. "Between fifteen and sixteen, I believe. She will be a nice companion for Miss Davis." "I do so hope we may be friends," Vera said eagerly. In a hotel where almost everybody was elderly, the idea of a girl friend was delightful. Lady Felicia, who had been very severe in her warnings against hotel-acquaintance, answered blandly, though with a touch of condescension. "If the girl is really nice, and has been well brought up, I should see no objections to Vera's knowing her." "Thank you, Grannie," cried Vera. "She is sure to be nice!" "Signor Provana's daughter cannot fail to be nice," protested the doctor. Lady Felicia was dubious. "An Italian!" she said. "She may be precocious--artful--of doubtful morality." "Signor Provana's daughter! Impossible!" Nothing happened to stir the stagnant pool of life at San Marco during the next day and the day after that. Vera asked Madame Canincio when Signor Provana and his daughter were expected, but could obtain no precise information. The rooms were ready. Madame Canincio showed Vera the _salon_, which she had seen in its spacious emptiness, with the shabby hotel furniture, but to which Signor Provana's additions had given an air of splendour. Sofas and easy chairs had been sent from Genoa, velvet curtains and _portières_, bronze lamps, and silver candlesticks, Persian carpets, everything that makes for comfort and luxury; and the bedroom for the young lady had been even more carefully prepared; but, beside her own graceful pillared bedstead, with its lace mosquito curtains, was the narrow bed for the night-nurse, which gave its sad indication of illness. The flowers were ready in the vases, filling the _salon_ with perfume.