_‘Au revoir_, then, till autumn; we’ll play on the Champs-Elysées together. ‘ELEANOR.’ A letter had come also from Marcia’s father, which put her in an uncomfortably unsettled frame of mind. It was written in the Copley vein of humorous appreciation of the situation; but, for all that, she could see underneath that she had hurt him. He disavowed all knowledge and culpability in the Triple Alliance and the Abyssinian war. He regretted the fact that the taxes were heavy, but he had had no hand in making up Italy’s financial budget. As to wheat, there were many reasons why Italy could not afford it, aside from the fact that it was dear. Marcia could give what she wished to the peasants to make up for her erring father, and he inclosed a blank cheque to her order—surely an excessive sign of penitence on the part of a business man. The letter closed with the statement that he was lonely without her, and that she must come back to America next winter and keep her old father out of mischief. She read the last few sentences over twice, with a rising lump in her throat. It was true. Poor man, he must be lonely! She ought to have tried to take her mother’s place, and to have made a home for him before now. Her duty suddenly presented itself very clearly, and it appeared as uninviting as duties usually do. A few months before she would not have minded, but now Italy had got its hold upon her. She did not wish to go; she wished only to sit in the sunshine, happy, unthinking, and let the days slip idly by. A picture flashed over her of what the American life would be—a brownstone house on Fifth Avenue in the winter, a country place in the Berkshires in the summer; an aunt of her mother’s for chaperon, her father’s friends—lawyers and bankers and brokers who talked railroads and the Stock Exchange; for interests she would have balls and receptions, literary clubs and charities. Marcia breathed a doleful sigh. Her memories of the New York house were dreary; it was not a life she cared to renew. But nothing of all this did she let her father know. She sent a gracefully forgiving letter, with the promise that she would come home for the winter, and not a hint that the home-coming was not her own desire. It seemed that, things having once commenced to change, everything was going. Mr. Copley himself exploded the next bombshell. He came back from Rome one night with the announcement that the weather was getting pretty hot, and the family ought to leave next week for Switzerland. ‘Oh, Uncle Howard, not yet!’ Marcia cried. ‘Let us wait until the end of June. It isn’t too hot till then. Up here in the hills it’s pleasant all summer. I don’t want to leave the villa.’