Marcia Copley assented with a smiling gesture, and the woman who wrote skilfully bridged over a second pause. ‘You were complaining the other day, Mr. Dessart, that the foreigners are making the Italians too modern. Why do you not catch the ghost? He is surely a true antique.’ ‘But I am not an impressionist,’ he pleaded. ‘Who is saying anything against impressionists?’ a young man asked in somewhat halting English as he paused beside the group. ‘No one,’ said Dessart; ‘I was merely disclaiming all knowledge of them and their ways. Miss Copley, allow me to present Monsieur Benoit, the last _Prix de Rome_—he is the man to paint your ghost. He’s an impressionist and paints nothing else.’ ‘I suppose you have ghosts enough in the Villa Medici, without having to search for them in the Sabine hills.’ ‘Ah, _oui_, mademoiselle; the Villa Medici has ghosts of many kinds—ghosts of dead hopes and dead ambitions among others.’ ‘I should think the ghost of a dead ambition might be too illusive for even an impressionist to catch,’ she returned. ‘Perhaps an impressionist is better acquainted with them than with anything else,’ suggested Dessart, a trifle unkindly. ‘Not when he’s young and a _Prix de Rome_,’ smiled the woman who wrote. Mrs. Copley requiring her niece’s presence on the other side of the room, the girl nodded to the group and withdrew. The writer looked after her with an air of puzzled interest. ‘And doesn’t Miss Copley read the papers?’ she inquired mildly. ‘Evidently she does not,’ Sybert rejoined with a laugh as he made his adieus and withdrew. --------------------- Half an hour later, Marcia Copley, having made the rounds of the room, again found herself, as tea was being served, in the neighbourhood of her new acquaintance. She dropped down on the divan beside her with a slight feeling of relief at being for the moment out of the current of chatter. Her companion was a vivacious little woman approaching middle age; and though she spoke perfect English, she pronounced her words with a precision which suggested a foreign birth. Her conversation was diverting; it gave evidence of a vast amount of worldly wisdom as well as a wide acquaintance with other people’s affairs. And her range of subjects was wide. She flitted lightly from an artistic estimate of some intaglios of the Augustan age, that had just been dug up outside the Porta Pia, to a comparison of French and Italian dressmakers and a prophecy as to which cardinal would be the next pope. A portfolio of sketches lay on a little stand beside them, and she presently drew them toward her, with the remark, ‘We will see how our young man has been amusing himself lately!’