She had been charming in evening dress; she was more charming still in her girlish straw hat and neat tailor-made costume, as she tripped lightly downstairs to them. Florian, by her side, while they walked through the streets, cast sheep’s eyes askance up at her. Even Will, more mindful of poor Linnet’s desertion, was not wholly insensible to that taking smile, those pearly white teeth, that dainty small nose, those rounded contours. They turned down the road in the direction of the Maria-Theresien Strasse. Will knew of old that quaintest and most picturesque of European High Streets, with its queer gabled roofs, its rococo façades, its mediæval towers, its arcades and pillars. But to Florian, it all came with the added charm of novelty. Twice or thrice on their way, the spirit moved him to stop and perorate. Each time, the pretty widow cut him short at once with some quick retort of truly American practicality. At the shop, Will selected a second necklet, exactly like the one Mrs Palmer had chosen. “I gave her nothing before I came away,” he said, turning to Florian, and only indicating by that very indefinite pronoun, the intended recipient of his beautiful gift. “One couldn’t give her _money_. ’Twould have been a positive insult. But this ought to look well on that smooth brown neck of hers.” “For your sister, _of course_,” Mrs Palmer said, pointedly. “No; not for my sister,” Will admitted, with a quiet smile. “For a girl at the inn we’ve just left at St Valentin.” Mrs Palmer said “Oh!” ’Twas an American _oh_. It deprecated the fact—and closed the episode. Cosmopolitan though she was, it surprised her not a little that Will should allude to such persons in a lady’s company. But there! these poets, you know—so many things must be condoned to them. Because they have loved much, much must be forgiven them. They have licence to break hearts and the most brittle of the commandments, with far less chance of blame than their even Christians. Will’s transaction completed, Mrs Palmer proceeded to buy a second similar set on her own account, for presentation to the second of the giggling inarticulates. “Poor girl!” she said, good-humouredly, “she looked so envious last night when I gave the other to Eva Powell, I couldn’t bear to think I’d left her out in the cold. Thirty florins, I think you said? Ah, yes; that’s twelve dollars. Not much to make a poor little girl so happy!”