and there is no need of your going into a
corner. Indeed, since you 're here, I propose to have the glory of it.
You must remain where my people can see you."

"They are evidently determined to do that by the way they stare. Do they
think I intend to dance a tarantella? Who are they all; do I know them?"
And lingering in the middle of the room, with her arm passed into Madame
Grandoni's, she let her eyes wander slowly from group to group.
They were of course observing her. Standing in the little circle
of lamplight, with the hood of an Eastern burnous, shot with silver
threads, falling back from her beautiful head, one hand gathering
together its voluminous, shimmering folds, and the other playing with
the silken top-knot on the uplifted head of her poodle, she was a figure
of radiant picturesqueness. She seemed to be a sort of extemporized
tableau vivant. Rowland's position made it becoming for him to speak
to her without delay. As she looked at him he saw that, judging by the
light of her beautiful eyes, she was in a humor of which she had not yet
treated him to a specimen. In a simpler person he would have called it
exquisite kindness; but in this young lady's deportment the flower was
one thing and the perfume another. "Tell me about these people," she
said to him. "I had no idea there were so many people in Rome I had not
seen. What are they all talking about? It 's all beyond me, I suppose.
There is Miss Blanchard, sitting as usual in profile against a dark
object. She is like a head on a postage-stamp. And there is that nice
little old lady in black, Mrs. Hudson. What a dear little woman for a
mother! Comme elle est proprette! And the other, the fiancee, of course
she 's here. Ah, I see!" She paused; she was looking intently at Miss
Garland. Rowland measured the intentness of her glance, and suddenly
acquired a firm conviction. "I should like so much to know her!" she
said, turning to Madame Grandoni. "She has a charming face; I am sure
she 's an angel. I wish very much you would introduce me. No, on second
thoughts, I had rather you did n't. I will speak to her bravely myself,
as a friend of her cousin." Madame Grandoni and Rowland exchanged
glances of baffled conjecture, and Christina flung off her burnous,
crumpled it together, and, with uplifted finger, tossing it into a
corner, gave it in charge to her poodle. He stationed himself upon it,
on his haunches, with upright vigilance. Christina crossed the room wi