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 crowding of strangers to Rome. In fact, she was assured that under the circumstances she was lucky in finding rooms as good as these; and she made the most of the assurance as a consolation for the somewhat unsatisfactory food and service of the hotel, and the four long flights of stairs which must be passed every time they needed to reach the dining-room or the street door.

The party had been in Rome only four days, but already they had seen a host of interesting things. They had stood in the strange sunken space with its marble floor and broken columns, which is all that is left of the great Roman Forum. They had visited the Coliseum, at that period still overhung with ivy garlands and trailing greeneries, and not, as now, scraped clean and bare and "tidied" out of much of its picturesqueness. They had seen the Baths of Caracalla and the Temple of Janus and St. Peter's and the Vatican marbles, and had driven out on the Campagna and to the Pamphili-Doria Villa to gather purple and red anemones, and