Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/23



WILIGHT was coming into the great where a slender American girl sat alone. On both sides of her were more rooms, large and vaulted, built by the great prince of a bygone age for the reception of other princes and their friends: a powerful and gorgeously iniquitous company, whose names survive in history and still lend a glamour to the visiting lists of Roman ladies.

It was long since the rooms had been emptied of this company, and in recent years the apartment had fallen into the hands of people from a new world, who had made of it a beautiful thing, such as it had been in the past, and rented it to friends just arrived from the same new world, who found themselves as much awed as it was in their nature to be, by surroundings of such vastness and dignity.

The little American girl looked very small and slight as she sat there alone in the dim and spacious room, which was hung splendidly with, the crimson of so many Roman rooms