Paul breathed a meditative ‘Ah!’ Marcia had not mentioned his name. It was not such a bad sign, that: she was thinking about him, then. If there were no other man—and he was vain enough to take her at her word—nothing could be better for his cause than a solitary week in the Sabine hills. He knew from present—and past—experience that an Italian spring is a powerful stimulant for the heart. On Tuesday of Holy Week Mrs. Royston wakened slightly from her spiritual trance to observe that she had scarcely seen Marcia for as much as a week, and that as soon as Lent was over they must have the Copleys in to luncheon at the hotel. ‘Where’s the use of waiting till Lent’s over?’ Paul had inquired. ‘You needn’t make it a function. Just a sort of—family affair. If you invite them for Thursday, we can all go together to the tenebræ service at St. Peter’s. As this is Miss Copley’s first Easter in Rome, she might be interested.’ Accordingly a note arrived at the villa on Wednesday morning inviting the family—Gerald included—to breakfast the next day with the Roystons in Rome. On Thursday morning an acceptance—Gerald excluded—arrived at the _Hôtel de Lourdres et Paris_, and was followed an hour later by the Copleys themselves. The breakfast went off gaily. Paul was his most expansive self, and the whole table responded to his mood. It was with a sense of gratification that Marcia saw her uncle, who had lately been so grave, laughingly exchanging nonsense with the young man. She felt, though she would scarcely have acknowledged it to herself, a certain property right in Paul, and it pleased her subtly when he pleased other people. She sat next to him at the table, and occasionally, beneath his laughter and persiflage, she caught an undertone of meaning. So long as they were not alone and he could not go beyond a certain point, she found their relations on a distinctly satisfying basis. In spite of Paul’s manœuvres, he did not find himself alone with Marcia that afternoon. There was always a cousin in attendance. Mr. and Mrs. Copley, declining the spectacle of the tenebræ in St. Peter’s—they had seen it before—left shortly after luncheon. As they were leaving, Mr. Copley remarked to Mrs. Royston— ‘I will entrust my niece to your care, and please do not lose sight of her until you put her in my hands for the evening train. I wish no more such escapades as we had the other day.’ And, to Marcia’s discomfort, the adventures involving the rescue of Marcellus and Gervasio were recounted in detail. For an unexplained reason, she would have preferred the story of their origin to remain in darkness. Paul’s face clouded slightly. ‘My objections to Sybert grow rapidly,’ he remarked in an undertone. Marcia laughed. ‘If you could have seen him! He never spoke a word to me all the way out in the train. He sat with his arms folded and a frown on his brow, like—Napoleon at Moscow.’ Paul’s face brightened again. ‘Oh, I begin to like him, after all,’ he declared.