‘No.’ She glanced down at her wrist, on which was a narrow gold bangle, with a flat disc hanging from it, which bracelet she always wore. Suddenly she looked up and held out her hand and arm. ‘Would you believe me capable of such sentimentality?’ she said. Minna examined the trinket, as she was evidently expected to do so. On the disc was engraved the very common device, in large thin letters one word above the other--_Roma_, _Amor_. Minna smiled at first. Her eyes, her heart smiled, and smiled with delight. She possessed some such baubles herself, and loved them, though she never wore them. She smiled, therefore, looked up, and met Fulvia’s eyes. The young woman still held out her hand and arm, steady and untrembling. She was not smiling. There was no alteration in the grave, firm line of her lips, in the straight sweep of her eyebrows, no deeper hue on her cheek or brow; but the light within her eyes and the expression which softened every line of her face startled Minna with a great shock. That was not a touch of girlish sentiment, that was not a bright mist of tender tears. No grief or regret, but an immense joy, lay behind that look. What had joy to do there? ‘Did you buy it?’ she asked abruptly. ‘Buy it!’ Fulvia laughed. ‘No; one does not buy trumpery things like that--at least, I don’t. Had I been buying, I would have got something more elegant, in better taste--more _recherchée_ in every respect. I did not buy it. It was given to me--bought off a second-hand dealer’s stall in the Campo dei Fiori, at the price that was asked for it, to the utter despair of the seller. I am sure that man will die with an unhealed wound in his heart, caused by the conviction that had he asked three times as much from the fool of a foreigner he could have got it.’ She laughed again, and pushed the bangle further up her firm white wrist. Minna smiled constrainedly, wishing she did not feel that disagreeable little thrill run down her spine on hearing this avowal; wishing also that the scene in the picture-gallery, when she had met Fulvia and Hans Riemann, had not flashed with such swiftness into her mind. It was evening, towards half-past seven, and after the little pause which ensued upon her last words Fulvia said she must go or she would not be home again and dressed in time for dinner. They dined at eight, as Minna was aware. Marchmont insisted upon being wheeled into the great dining-room where the meal was set out in state, and where, at one end of the table, waited upon by his own servant, he made the kind of meal which he was permitted to have, while his wife, at the other end of the board, in _demie-toilette_, ate her dinner under the auspices of a butler and a footman of the gravest type. It was, as she had told Minna more than once, a ghastly entertainment; ‘but,’ she always concluded, ‘it seems to afford him some kind of comfort or to gratify his love of display, or something, so I make no objection.’