"Will it help one to understand, do you think, and not bring new puzzles?" she asked, still smiling. "It seems to me now, as if every experience brought something strange instead of making the old clearer." Miss Preston looked at her helplessly, and then put her head out of window. "I never saw such a climate!" she exclaimed angrily. "Raining when we started, and now quite fine. I am sure I trust we may find more consistent weather in Rome." CHAPTER TWELVE. "ONE AND ONE, WITH A SHADOWY THIRD." If Florence has not forgotten her past, Rome has kept hers yet more faithfully, or rather has had a mightier one to keep. It is no longer the life of a few centuries back in which you move, Guelf and Ghibelline flaunting their battlements in your face; artist, sculptor, poet, working their lives out for the beautiful and ungrateful city--but an older age. The stones of the Republic are before your eyes, the road of triumph is under your feet. There, in the Forum, the great twin brethren watered their horses after the battle; hard by the martyrs were given to the lions. Look where you will, there is something which, as you recognise it, brings a thrill to your heart, stirs an interest deeper than Florence can excite, and binds you to Rome for ever. No other city in the world resembles her. In Egypt you are taken back yet further; in Athens, memories of scarcely smaller interest cluster round the golden stones; but they have only their past, while Rome is alive, acting, carrying on her history, many-sided; appealing to the present, to the future--stern, grey, sunshiny, brilliant, all at once. Something of this sort had been said by one of a little party of people who were strolling about the Palatine Hill one December afternoon, and Mrs Leyton opposed it altogether on behalf of Florence. "As to age, it is merely a comparative matter," she announced. "I don't feel very aged myself, but I heard a chit at the table-d'hote yesterday speak of somebody as `quite old, oh, about thirty.' It all depends upon the point from which you look at it. And I do think it is a shame to run down that beautiful Florence, about which you all pretended to be so enthusiastic when you were there, because some of these old stones of Rome have been set up for a few hundred years longer." Jack Ibbetson, who had been reconnoitring, came back. "Run--hide yourselves--be quick!" he said anxiously. "Miss Preston is coming this way with a victim." "It is Phillis who must be hidden then. I believe you and I have taught her to avoid us, but I am getting vexed with Phillis for the patience with which she listens to long archaeological discussions which don't interest her in the least."