et. General Laurance should not detain the
Doctor's party."

"They have a carriage. I am on horseback, and can easily overtake
them; but if I dared, would beg the privilege of accompanying you,
instead of drinking sour wine, and smoking poor cigars among the
ivy-wreathed ruins that await me at Baiae Ah, may I hope? Be generous,
banish me not. May I attend you to-day?

"No, sir. Go pay your _devoir_ to friendship and courtesy. I have
faithful guardians in the two coming yonder to meet me."

She pointed to the heads of Mr. and Mrs. Waul just visible over the
mass of ruins that intervened, and lifting her handkerchief, waved it
twice.

"You have established a system of signal service with those antique
ogres, griffons? Really they resemble crouching cougars, ready to
spring upon the unwary who dare penetrate to the sacred precincts
that enclose you. Why do you always travel with that grim body-guard?
Surely they are not relatives?"

"They are faithful old friends who followed me across the Atlantic,
who are invaluable, and shield me from impertinent annoyances, to
which all women of my profession are more or less subjected. The
world to which you belong sometimes seem disposed to forget that
beneath and behind the paint and powder, false hair and fine tragic
airs and costumes they pay to strangle time for them at _San Carlo_,
or _Teatro de' Fiorentini_ there breathes a genuine human thing; a
creature with a true, pure, womanly heart beating under the velvet,
gauze, and tinsel, and with blood that now and then boils under
unprovoked and dastardly insult. If I were cross-eyed, or had been
afflicted with small-pox, or were otherwise disfigured, I should not
require Mr. and Mrs. Waul; but Madame Orme, the lonely widow deprived
by death of a father's or brother's watchful protection, finds her
humble companions a valuable barrier against presumption and
insolence. For instance, when strangers, pleased with my carefully
practised _jeu de theatre_, send fulsome notes and costly
_bijouterie_ to my lodgings, praying in return a lock of my hair or
a photograph, my griffons, as you facetiously term them, rarely even
consult me, but generally send back the jewels by the bearer, and
twist the _billets-doux_ into tapers to light Mr. Waul's pipe.
Sometimes I see them; often I am saved the trouble of knowing
anything about the impertinence."

Her voice was sweet and mellow as a Phrygian flute sounding softly on
moonlight nights t