nappishly that "people must get about somehow, and it's
better than torturing horses up these horrid little hills." She spoke of
the Seven Hills of Rome as "horrid little hills "!

And the day they went on the Palatine--though Miss Winchelsea did not know
of this--she remarked suddenly to Fanny, "Don't hurry like that, my dear;
_they_ don't want us to overtake them. And we don't say the right
things for them when we _do_ get near."

"I wasn't trying to overtake them," said Fanny, slackening her excessive
pace; "I wasn't indeed." And for a minute she was short of breath.

But Miss Winchelsea had come upon happiness. It was only when she came to
look back across an intervening tragedy that she quite realised how happy
she had been pacing among the cypress-shadowed ruins, and exchanging the
very highest class of information the human mind can possess, the most
refined impressions it is possible to convey. Insensibly emotion crept
into their intercourse, sunning itself openly and pleasantly at last when
Helen's modernity was not too near. Insensibly their interest drifted from
the wonderful associations about them to their more intimate and personal
feelings. In a tentative way information was supplied; she spoke
allusively of her school, of her examination successes, of her gladness
that the days of "Cram" were over. He made it quite clear that he also was
a teacher. They spoke of the greatness of their calling, of the necessity
of sympathy to face its irksome details, of a certain loneliness they
sometimes felt.

That was in the Colosseum, and it was as far as they got that day, because
Helen returned with Fanny--she had taken her into the upper galleries. Yet
the private dreams of Miss Winchelsea, already vivid and concrete enough,
became now realistic in the highest degree. She figured that pleasant
young man lecturing in the most edifying way to his students, herself
modestly prominent as his intellectual mate and helper; she figured a
refined little home, with two bureaus, with white shelves of high-class
books, and autotypes of the pictures of Rossetti and Burne Jones, with
Morris's wall-papers and flowers in pots of beaten copper. Indeed she
figured many things. On the Pincio the two had a few precious moments
together, while Helen marched Fanny off to see the _muro Torto_, and
he spoke at once plainly. He said he hoped their friendship was only
beginning, that he already found her company very precious to him, th