The girl’s heart indeed was young at last. For the neighbourhood of Connie was infectious. The fairy-godmothering of that young woman was going finely. It was the secret hope at the centre of her own life which was playing like captured sunshine upon all the persons about her. Her energy was prodigious. Everything to do with money-matters had been practically settled between her and Sorell and Uncle Ewen; and settled in Connie’s way, expressed, no doubt, in business form. And now she was insisting firmly on the New Year visit to Rome, in spite of many protests from Uncle Ewen and Nora. It was a promise, she declared. They should be let off Athens, if they chose, but Rome—Rome—was their fate. She wrote endless letters, inquiring for rooms, and announcing their coming to her old friends. Uncle Ewen soon had the startled impression that all Rome was waiting for them, and that they could never live up to it. Finally, Connie persuaded them to settle on rooms in a well-known small hotel, overlooking the garden-front of the Palazzo Barberini, where she had grown up. She wrote to the innkeeper, Signor B., ‘a _very_ old friend of mine,’ who replied that the ‘amici’ of the ‘distintissima signorina’ should be most tenderly looked after. As for the Contessas and Marchesas who wrote, eagerly promising their ‘dearest Constance’ that they would be kind to her relations, they were many; and when Ewen Hooper said nervously that it was clear he must take out both a frock-coat and dress-clothes, Constance laughed and said, ‘Not at all! Signor B. will lend you anything you want,’—a remark which, in the ears of the travellers to be, threw new and unexpected light on the functions of an Italian innkeeper. Meanwhile she piled up guide-books, she gathered maps; and she taught both her uncle and Nora Italian. And so long as she was busied with such matters she seemed the gayest of creatures, and would go singing and laughing about the house.