There is the very tenderness of desolation upon the Appian Way.  To me it suggested nothing of the splendour of Roman villas and the tragedy of flying Emperors.  It spoke only of itself, lying over the wide silence of the noon-day fields, historic doubtless, but noon-day certainly.  Something lives upon the warm stretches of the Appian Way, something that talks of the eternal and unchangeable, and yet has the pathos of the fragmentary and the lost.  Perhaps it is the ghost of a genius that has failed of reincarnation, and inspires the weeds and the leaf-shadows instead.  Thinking of it, one remembers only an almond tree in flower, that grew beside a ruined arch by the wayside—­both quite alone in the sunlight—­and perhaps of a meek, young, marble Cecilia, unquestioningly prostrate, submissive to the axe.

We were on our way to the Catacombs, momma, the Senator, and Mrs. Portheris in one carriage, R. Dod, Mr. Mafferton, Isabel, and I in the other.  I approved of the arrangement, because the mutually distant understanding that existed between Mr. Mafferton and me had already been the subject of remark by my parents. ("For old London acquaintances you and Mr. Mafferton seem to have very little to say to each other,” momma had observed that very morning.) It was borne in upon me that this was absurd.  People have no business to be estranged for life because one of them has happened to propose to the other, unless, of course, he has been accepted and afterwards divorced, which is quite a different thing.  Besides, there was Dicky to think of.  I decided that there was a medium in all things, and to help me to find it I wore a blouse from Madame Valerie in the Rue de l’Opera, which cost seven times its value, and was naturally becoming.  Perhaps this was going to extreme measures; but he was a recalcitrant Englishman, and for Dicky’s sake one had to think of everything.

Englishmen have a genius for looking uncomfortable.  Their feelings are terribly mixed up with their personal appearance.  It was some time before Mr. Mafferton would consent to be even tolerably at his ease, though I made a distinct effort to show that I bore no malice.  It must have been the mere memory of the past that embarrassed him, for the other two were as completely unaware of his existence as they well could be in the same carriage.  For a time, as I talked in commonplaces, Mr. Mafferton in monosyllables, and Mr. Dod and Miss Portheris in regards, the most sordid realist would have hesitated to chronicle our conversation.

“When,” I inquired casually, “are you thinking of going back, Mr. Mafferton?”

“To town?  Not before October, I fancy!”

“Even in Rome,” I observed, “London is ‘town’ to you, isn’t it?  What a curious thing insular tradition is!”

“I suppose Rome was invented first,” he replied haughtily.

“Why yes,” I said; “while the ancestors of Eaton-square were running about in blue paint and bear-skins, and Albert Gate, in the directory, was a mere cave.  What do you suppose,” I went on, following up this line of thought, “when you were untutored savages, was your substitute for the Red Book?”