Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/469

461 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 461 Osmond took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving the former article two or three strokes with his coat-cuff " On the whole, I think," he said, "you had better leave it to me." After he had left her, Madame Merle went and lifted from the mantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he -had mentioned the existence of a crack ; but she looked at it rather abstractedly. " Have I been so vile all for nothing 1 " she murmured to herself. L. As the Countess Gemini was not acquainted with the ancient monuments, Isabel occasionally offered to introduce her to these interesting relics and to give their afternoon drive an antiquarian aim. The Countess, who professed to think her sister-in-law a prodigy of learning, never made an objection, and gazed at masses of Eoman brickwork as patiently as if they had been mounds of modern drapery. She was not an antiquarian ; but she was so delighted to be in Rome that she only desired to float with the current. She would gladly have passed an hour every day in the damp darkness of the Baths of Titus, if it had been a con- dition of her remaining at the Palazzo Roccanera. Isabel, however, was not a severe cicerone ; she used to visit the ruins chiefly because they offered an excuse for talking about other matters than the love-affairs of the ladies of Florence, as to which her companion was never weary of offering information. It must be added that during these visits the Countess was not very active ; her preference was to sit in the carriage and exclaim that everything was most interesting". It was in this manner that she had hitherto examined the Coliseum, to the infinite regret of her niece, who with all the respect that she owed her could not see why she should not descend from the vehicle ind enter the building. Pansy had so little chance to ramble ihat her view of the case was not wholly disinterested ; it may be divined that she had a secret hope that, once inside, her aunt might be induced to climb to the upper tiers. There came a day when the Countess announced her willingness to under- take this feat a mild afternoon in March, when the windy month expressed itself in occasional puffs of spring. The three ladies went into the Coliseum together, but Isabel left her com- panions to wander over the place. She had often ascended to those desolate ledges from which the Roman crowd used to