Roman society is the most exclusive in the world. Your Roman princess will usually take her airing in her brougham with the windows carefully closed, even on a warm spring afternoon. She holds herself aloof from the crowd of wealthy foreigners, even though her great gaunt palazzo has been denuded of every picture and work of art years ago, and she lives with a _donna di casa_ in four or five meagre rooms on the first floor, the remainder of the great place being unfurnished and untenanted. There is more pitiful make-believe among the aristocracy of Rome than in any other city in the world. The old principessa, the marchesa, and the contessa keep themselves within their own little circle, and sneer at the wealthy foreigner and his blatant display of riches. One hears girls of the school-room discussing the social scale of passers-by, and disregarding them as not being "of the aristocracy" like themselves. Truly the Eternal City is a complex one in winter, and the Corso at four o'clock, is the centre of it all. You know that slowly-passing almost funereal line of carriages, some of them very old and almost hearse-like, moving up and down, half of them emblazoned with coronets and shields--for the Italian is ever proud of his heraldry--while the other half hired conveyances, many of them ordinary cabs in which sit some of the wealthiest men and women in Europe who have come south to see the antiquities and to enjoy the sunshine. Behind the lumbering old-fashioned brougham of a weedy marchesa, Lord Nassington drove his big powerful car at snail's pace, and almost silently. In such traffic the flexibility of the six-cylinder is at once appreciated. Both Garrett and his master had their eyes about them, as though in search of some one. A dozen times pretty women in furs bowed to Lord Nassington, who raised his motor-cap in acknowledgment. The smart, good-looking young peer had spent a couple of months there during the previous winter and had become immensely popular with the cosmopolitan world who gather annually in the Italian capital. Therefore, when he had arrived at the Excelsior, a week before, word had quickly gone round the hotels, clubs, pastrycooks, and _cafes_ that the young English motoring milord had returned. Upon the table of his luxurious little sitting-room at the hotel were lying a dozen or so invitations to dinners, receptions, the opera, and a luncheon-party out at Tivoli, while Charles, his man, had been busy spreading some picturesque gossip concerning his master.