er up after nearly
two score years of separation, but he was impressed enough to resolve to
exchange a word with the strangers as soon as he could get opportunity.

He could not well attract their attention through the plants upon the
wide table, and even if he had been able he was disinclined to ask
questions in public. He waited on till dinner was over, and when the
strangers withdrew Pierston withdrew in their rear.

They were not in the drawing-room, and he found that they had gone
out. There was no chance of overtaking them, but Pierston, waked to
restlessness by their remarks, wandered up and down the adjoining Piazza
di Spagna, thinking they might return. The streets below were immersed
in shade, the front of the church of the Trinita de' Monti at the
top was flooded with orange light, the gloom of evening gradually
intensifying upon the broad, long flight of steps, which foot-passengers
incessantly ascended and descended with the insignificance of ants; the
dusk wrapped up the house to the left, in which Shelley had lived, and
that to the right, in which Keats had died.

Getting back to the hotel he learnt that the Americans had only dropped
in to dine, and were staying elsewhere. He saw no more of them; and on
reflection he was not deeply concerned, for what earthly woman, going
off in a freak as Marcia had done, and keeping silence so long, would
care for a belated friendship with him now in the sere, even if he were
to take the trouble to discover her.

* * *

Thus much Marcia. The other thread of his connection with the ancient
Isle of Slingers was stirred by a letter he received from Avice a little
after this date, in which she stated that her husband Ike had been
killed in his own quarry by an accident within the past year; that she
herself had been ill, and though well again, and left amply provided
for, she would like to see him if he ever came that way.

As she had not communicated for several long years, her expressed wish
to see him now was likely to be prompted by something more, something
newer, than memories of him. Yet the manner of her writing precluded all
suspicion that she was thinking of him as an old lover whose suit events
had now made practicable. He told her he was sorry to hear that she had
been ill, and that he would certainly take an early opportunity of going
down to her home on his next visit to England.

He did more. Her request had r