hat she had been
jilted by her lover. Even when the mountains of Switzerland had been
so fine before her eyes as in truth to console her by their beauty,
she had not admitted that she was consoled. The Campanile at Florence
had filled her with that satisfaction which comes from supreme
beauty. But still when she went home to her hotel she thought more
of Sir Francis Geraldine than of the Campanile. To have been jilted
would be bad, but to have it said of her that she had been jilted
when she was conscious that it was untrue was a sore provocation.
And yet no one could say but that she had behaved well and been
instigated by good motives. She had found that her lover was ignoble,
and did not love her. And she had at once separated herself from him.
And, since that, in all her correspondence with her friends she had
quietly endured the idea which would continually crop up that she had
been jilted. She never denied it; but it was the false accusation
rather than the loss of all that her marriage had promised her
which made her feel the Matterhorn and the Campanile to be equally
ineffective. Then there gradually came to her some comfort from a
source from which she had certainly not expected it. On their travels
they had become acquainted with a Mr. Western, a silent, shy, almost
middle-aged man, whom they had sat next to at dinner for nearly a
week before they had become acquainted with him. But they had passed
on from scenery to city, and, as had been their fortune, Mr. Western
had passed on with them. Who does not know the way in which some
strange traveller becomes his friend on a second or a third meeting
in some station or hotel saloon? In this way Mrs. Holt and Cecilia
had become acquainted with Mr. Western, and on parting with him at
Venice in October had received with gratification the assurance that
he would again "turn up" in Rome.

"He is a very good sort of man," said Mrs. Holt to her daughter that
night. Cecilia agreed, but with perhaps less enthusiasm than her
mother had displayed. For Mrs. Holt the assertion had been quite
enthusiastic. But Cecilia did think that Mr. Western had made himself
agreeable. He was an unmarried man, however, and there had been
something in the nature of a communication which he had made to her,
that had prevented her from being loud in his praise. Not that the
communication had been one which had in any way given offence; but it
had been unexpected, confidential, and of such a na