The first person upon whom Arthur's eyes fell, as he entered the room where the students' little gatherings were held, was his old playmate, Dr. Warren's daughter. She was sitting in a corner by the window, listening with an absorbed and earnest face to what one of the “initiators,” a tall young Lombard in a threadbare coat, was saying to her. During the last few months she had changed and developed greatly, and now looked a grown-up young woman, though the dense black plaits still hung down her back in school-girl fashion. She was dressed all in black, and had thrown a black scarf over her head, as the room was cold and draughty. At her breast was a spray of cypress, the emblem of Young Italy. The initiator was passionately describing to her the misery of the Calabrian peasantry; and she sat listening silently, her chin resting on one hand and her eyes on the ground. To Arthur she seemed a melancholy vision of Liberty mourning for the lost Republic. (Julia would have seen in her only an overgrown hoyden, with a sallow complexion, an irregular nose, and an old stuff frock that was too short for her.) “You here, Jim!” he said, coming up to her when the initiator had been called to the other end of the room. “Jim” was a childish corruption of her curious baptismal name: Jennifer. Her Italian schoolmates called her “Gemma.” She raised her head with a start. “Arthur! Oh, I didn't know you--belonged here!” “And I had no idea about you. Jim, since when have you----?” “You don't understand!” she interposed quickly. “I am not a member. It is only that I have done one or two little things. You see, I met Bini--you know Carlo Bini?” “Yes, of course.” Bini was the organizer of the Leghorn branch; and all Young Italy knew him. “Well, he began talking to me about these things; and I asked him to let me go to a students' meeting. The other day he wrote to me to Florence------Didn't you know I had been to Florence for the Christmas holidays?” “I don't often hear from home now.” “Ah, yes! Anyhow, I went to stay with the Wrights.” (The Wrights were old schoolfellows of hers who had moved to Florence.) “Then Bini wrote and told me to pass through Pisa to-day on my way home, so that I could come here. Ah! they're going to begin.” The lecture was upon the ideal Republic and the duty of the young to fit themselves for it. The lecturer's comprehension of his subject was somewhat vague; but Arthur listened with devout admiration. His mind at this period was curiously uncritical; when he accepted a moral ideal he swallowed it whole without stopping to think whether it was quite digestible. When the lecture and the long discussion which followed it were finished and the students began to disperse, he went up to Gemma, who was still sitting in the corner of the room. “Let me walk with you, Jim. Where are you staying?” “With Marietta.” “Your father's old housekeeper?” “Yes; she lives a good way from here.”