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The Imp Disposes oddly, when you consider their remarks seriously. The very day after the scene I have described, as he was waiting for the luncheon bell to ring, he heard two ladies discussing her.

"Ah, she's perfectly wonderful, my dear, beyond a doubt. Do you know another woman who'd have carried an affair off like that? To be butted down before a whole piazza-full! I should have died at her age."

"And the way she sat and held him, afterward! The men went perfectly wild over it. Mr. Florian took a snap-shot of it, they tell me. He mounted it, and wrote The Madonna of the Piazza under it, and sent it to her after breakfast." "Well, she did look very sweet sitting there. Her skirt fell very well. It's the accordeon-pleating, I suppose."

"Yes. Mr. Bishop said this morning that he understood Turkish furnishing as never before. He said that if women knew more they'd sit on the floor more—what do you think of that, my dear?"

"Oh, well, she's simply done herself good by it, instead of being made ridiculous, as any one else would have been. The men like her even better." 130