name. Are you going to stay with Isabel?"

Henrietta held up her head, gazing a little in silence at her hostess.
"She has not asked me. I wrote to her I was coming, and she answered
that she would engage a room for me at a pension. She gave no reason."

The Countess listened with extreme interest. "The reason's Osmond," she
pregnantly remarked.

"Isabel ought to make a stand," said Miss Stackpole. "I'm afraid she has
changed a great deal. I told her she would."

"I'm sorry to hear it; I hoped she would have her own way. Why doesn't
my brother like you?" the Countess ingenuously added.

"I don't know and I don't care. He's perfectly welcome not to like me;
I don't want every one to like me; I should think less of myself if some
people did. A journalist can't hope to do much good unless he gets a
good deal hated; that's the way he knows how his work goes on. And it's
just the same for a lady. But I didn't expect it of Isabel."

"Do you mean that she hates you?" the Countess enquired.

"I don't know; I want to see. That's what I'm going to Rome for."

"Dear me, what a tiresome errand!" the Countess exclaimed.

"She doesn't write to me in the same way; it's easy to see there's a
difference. If you know anything," Miss Stackpole went on, "I should
like to hear it beforehand, so as to decide on the line I shall take."

The Countess thrust out her under lip and gave a gradual shrug. "I know
very little; I see and hear very little of Osmond. He doesn't like me
any better than he appears to like you."

"Yet you're not a lady correspondent," said Henrietta pensively.

"Oh, he has plenty of reasons. Nevertheless they've invited me--I'm
to stay in the house!" And the Countess smiled almost fiercely; her
exultation, for the moment, took little account of Miss Stackpole's
disappointment.

This lady, however, regarded it very placidly. "I shouldn't have gone if
she HAD asked me. That is I think I shouldn't; and I'm glad I hadn't
to make up my mind. It would have been a very difficult question. I
shouldn't have liked to turn away from her, and yet I shouldn't have
been happy under her roof. A pension will suit me very well. But that's
not all."

"Rome's very good just now," said the Countess; "there are all sorts of
brilliant people. Did you ever hear of Lord Warburton?"

"Hear of him? I know him very well. Do you consider him very brilliant?"
Henrietta enquired.

"I don't know him, but I'm told he's extremely grand