Mrs. Mullet fell into a chair and seemed to find it hard work to breathe. Betsey put her smelling-salts under the lady's nose. She quickly regained her self-possession and rose and said, in a trembling voice: “Thank you! I am going home.” She left, and again we paid our compliments to the artist, who politely left his work to speak with us. He asked me for information regarding certain Americans who owed him for busts. An actress had had herself put, life-size and nude, into white marble, and after making her first payment was maintaining a discreet silence in some part of the world unknown to the artist. “How coy!” Betsey exclaimed as she looked at the marble figure. A Brooklyn woman and her two daughters had sat for busts and then had weakened on the general proposition and abandoned the country when they were half finished. I made haste to depart for fear that he might wish to engage me as collector for his bust factory. Just beyond the door we met a young man who had come over on the boat with us, and stopped for a word with him. I was telling him that I was going to see the Pantheon that afternoon, when Muggs greeted me. “It's a wonderful ruin,” he remarked with a smile. I made no answer, and he entered the studio, probably to meet Mrs. Mullet. He would get his dismissal soon. Then what? IX.--A MODERN AMERICAN MARRYER ENTERS THE SCENE I HAVE read that there are no fairies in Italy, but I know better. Italy is full of them, and they are the most light-footed, friendly, impartial, democratic fairies in the world. They are liable to make friends with anybody. Like many Italians, they seem to live mostly on the foreign population. A number of them adopted me for a residence. Sometimes, when they were playful, they made me feel like a winter resort. They used to enjoy tobogganing down the slopes of my shoulders and digging their toes in the snow; they held games here and there on my person, which seemed to be well attended. I got a glimpse of one of them now and then, and we became acquainted with each other; and, while he was very shy, I am sure that he knew and liked me. I called him Oberon. He and his kin did me a great service, for they taught me why people move their arms and shrug their shoulders so much in Italy. Then, too, I always had company wherever I happened to be. So when Betsey and the Norris ladies implored me to go with them to Mrs. Dorsey's palace and hear a prince lecture, I reported that I was engaged to play with the fairies, whereupon they concluded that I wanted the time for meditation and left me out of their plans. So it happened that I was, fortunately, alone with Norris when Forbes arrived, a full day ahead of his schedule.