Jack put the question with evident eagerness. They had just turned into that open space which the Fountain of Trevi seems to fill with the glad rush of its waters. Clear streams leap from twenty different points; there is a confusion, a harmony, a most invigorating freshness in the silvery flashes. Phillis stood still for a moment, looking at them with her hand on a low wall which the spray had wetted. It seemed to her as if his question meant something quite different, as if he would have said, "Does she not like me a little?"--as if her hand must open the door between two hearts. Alas! but was there not a third which she herself was shutting out? She did not hesitate, but she was conscious of a feeling that it was hard on her that this, too, should be left for her to do. And what of Bice's last confidence? As she turned and looked at Jack, did he guess what faithfulness, what kindness were shining in those clear brown eyes? "I am sure she does not like him," she said. "But I fear--" "What?" "I fear that he is using unfair means to bind her to him." "But what can be done?" he asked as they walked on again. "Suppose, for instance, that I became the particular man to whom you alluded, what should you do if you were in my place? We have arrived at a complete labyrinth of suppositions, but still--supposing?" "I should go to England, and trace the matter out." "Very direct and decided, Phillis," said Jack with a smile. Christian names had, of course, been used between them all their lives, and it would have been impossible to break off the custom; but still, as if by common consent, they did not use them more often than was necessary, and it seemed to Phillis as if he need not have brought hers in now, still less lingered slightly upon it. "Well--it's hard to send me out of Rome, but if the fellow is what you take him to be, there would be a certain pleasure in baffling him, and one could but try." "Yes, I think so," she said quietly. There was no need for her to thank him for what must be a grateful task, and she did not attempt it. Nor would she ask him questions as to his going. Perhaps Ibbetson expected something of one sort or the other, but the bells of Sant' Andrea began to clash in their brick belfry overhead, and the Peningtons came rushing out of a side street from which they had caught a glimpse of Phillis. Miss Penington was small, plump and bright-eyed; her brother a clergyman of thirty, short-sighted, energetic, and quick in all his movements, with a sweet kind smile. As they all walked together through the Piazza di Spagna by the pretty jewellers' shops towards the Alemagna, Phillis would have been very much astonished had any one told her that Jack, whose natural disposition was certainly peaceable, felt a far stronger aversion to Mr Penington than to Oliver Trent, against whom he was going to open a campaign. CHAPTER THIRTEEN. IN THE VATICAN.