‘Rome is hot just now in more ways than one,’ he returned. ‘I’d feel safer to have you in Switzerland or up in the Tyrol during the excitement. Goodness only knows what’s going to happen next. I’m expecting to wake up in the middle of a French revolution every morning, and I should like to have you out of the country before the beheading begins.’ ‘There isn’t really any danger of a revolution?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘Not in a country where every other man’s a soldier and the government’s in command. But there have been houses broken into and a good many acts of lawlessness, and we’re rather lonely off here.’ ‘I hate to think of going away,’ Marcia sighed. ‘We’ll come back in the autumn, won’t we, Uncle Howard?’ ‘Oh, yes, if you like. I dare say we could manage a month or so out here before we go into the palazzo for the winter.’ ‘And I’ll be going back to America for the winter,’ she sighed. He looked at her with a slight smile. ‘Are you the girl, Marcia, who used to preach sermons to your uncle about Americans living abroad?’ Marcia reflected his smile somewhat wanly. ‘And I’m practising my own preaching, am I not?’ ‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘when the time comes you can do as you please. Your father can get along without you one year more.’ ‘No, I think I ought to go, for of course he must be lonely but—I should like to stay! It seems more like home than any place I’ve ever been in. I’ve really never _belonged_ anywhere before, and I like so much to be with you.’ ‘Poor little girl! You have had a chequered career.’ ‘Yes, Uncle Howard, I have; and it keeps on being chequered! I haven’t been in the villa three months, but really I don’t remember ever having lived so long in one place before. It’s been nice, hasn’t it? I hate dreadfully to have it end. It seems like shutting away a whole part of my life that can never come back.’ ‘Oh, well, if you feel that way about it, I’ll buy the villa and we can come out every spring. You can bring your father over, and we will dip him in the waters of Lethe, too.’ ‘I’m afraid he wouldn’t be dipped,’ she laughed. ‘He’d be running a cable connexion out here and setting up a ticker on the terrace, so that he could watch the stock market as well as the view.’ Mr. Copley’s mouth twitched slightly at the picture. ‘We must all ride our hobbies, I suppose, or the world would be a very dreary world indeed.’ She looked up at him and hesitated. ‘Uncle Howard, do you and papa—that is—do you mind my asking?—are you very good friends?’