She had Mayne’s letter. He had seen Mrs. Summers. He intended to be ostensibly busied in getting together funds and volunteers for a new exploring expedition, the progress of which was to be extensively paragraphed. In the meantime, he told her, he simply waited. He was in her hands. At any moment a summons would bring him to her. It was a characteristic letter--terse, restrained, almost laconic in tone. The letter of a man who would not plead, because, under the circumstances, pleading seemed unfair; yet, after reading it, Cecily had never so fully realized the strength and abidingness of his love for her. She took the letter with her on her journeyings, and carried it about with her. It was never absent from her thoughts. It was in the background of her consciousness on the quay at Genoa, while she watched the teams of white horses in their scarlet coats pulling lumbering wagons. In thought she considered it, while with Diana she admired the picturesqueness of the shuttered houses, festooned with fluttering washing, or stooped to look inside the cave-like, fourteenth-century shops, or climbed the many steep flights of steps to the upper town, whence they looked upon an enchanting sea of roofs; roofs the color of faded carnations, of orange lichen, of mushroom brown, each with its tiny pergola of vines, its tub of oleander, or its orange tree. It was with her in Florence, when she stood before the great pictures in gallery or palace, when, at the sunset hour, the cathedral and the exquisite campanile were suddenly turned to mother-of-pearl and roses against the violet sky. It was with her here in Rome. To think of it, to ponder over all that it implied, to force herself to come to some decision, she had wandered to-day into the garden of the villa, glad to be alone. Diana, who had made friends with a lively party of American girls at the hotel, had joined one of their excursions to Tivoli, and would not be back till the evening. Cecily crossed the Piazza di Spagna, and paused to look at the banks of flowers which, piled up at the foot of the stately sweep of steps, make an exquisite foreground to one of the most charming pictures in Rome. Like bees, the flower-sellers instantly surrounded her, offering seashell-tinted and scarlet anemones, branches of deep orange-colored roses, sprays of feathery mimosa, violets, and quaint, flat little bouquets of pink rosebuds. She bought a bunch of the latter, and freeing herself from the buzzing crowd, began to mount the shallow, moss-grown steps, shaking her head smilingly at the little _contadini_ models, with their elaborately picturesque rags, and their proffered nosegays. At the top, she paused as usual to glance over the beautiful ribbed roofs of the city, roofs which always made her think of brown shells cast up by the sea of time; shells that had suffered a sea-change.