She put on a beautiful white scarf and a black hat with a pink ribbon, which she thought very smart; powdered herself carefully, and imagined every one was going to admire her as they did at home. "Behold how lovely my Regina is!" said Antonio, half serious, half amused; "and just you look at her hat!" Gaspare, buttoned up in his new great-coat, fat, heavy, rosy and pompous, was waiting at the dining-room door. He looked at Regina out of the corner of his eye, then saluted her and said gravely-- "Your hat is like a swallow's nest." "I'd like to hear what you know about hats, when you know nothing about women," said Antonio. "I shall never marry," declared Gaspare; "but if I should be overtaken by such unhappiness, at least my wife shall not make herself ridiculous." "Ridiculous?" retorted Regina. "Who? the unhappy one?" Gaspare deigned no reply. They started. Regina never forgave her husband for taking Gaspare with them on this their first walk through Rome. "We'll go down Via Cavour to the Forum, and come back by Piazza Venezia and Via Nazionale," proposed Antonio, consulting his watch; "it's late already." The weather had cleared. Great drops of shining water fell from the trees in the Via Torino gardens. Santa Maria Maggiore, rose-coloured and grey against the blue sky, towered like a mountain above her broad flight of rain-washed steps. Gaspare pointed to the church with his umbrella and named it. Regina looked indifferently; the edifice seemed to her ugly. They went down Via Cavour. The wood pavement was drying rapidly, and Regina naïvely remarked that it wasn't polished as she had supposed last night. "I should hope not!" said Gaspare, who dropped behind now and then to hawk and spit. "What extraordinary things women do suppose! The very opposite of the facts!" "Men too," retorted Regina. "Men oftener than women," added Antonio, gallantly. "Eh! Possibly. _Sometimes_," said Gaspare, with a disagreeable smile. Gaspare's rude manners offended Regina, though she had been warned he was "quite a character." Presently, however, she forgot him, and became absorbed in contemplation of the new things she was seeing. People passed rapidly along the pavements, umbrellas under their arms; vivid light poured from the blue sky still furrowed by metallic clouds; through the bright moist air strayed the smell of roasted chestnuts. Yes! this wide, brilliant street was really fine! In a shop window were exhibited five astonishing hats, which Regina admired more than Santa Maria Maggiore. But presently the brothers made her deviate into a lane, dismal with old houses and old gardens hanging under high bastion-like walls, which went up and down, where there were no pavements, no shops, only a dirty crowd of hawkers, herb-sellers, street arabs. They walked on and on, but this melancholy street seemed endless. Regina grew tired; she leaned on Antonio's arm, and began again to feel a dull weight of sadness. Was this Rome?