ming."

"You must excuse me, dear Miss Hamelyn," went on Madame Petrucci. "You
must excuse me for shouting in your presence, but we have only one
little servant, and during this suffocating weather I find that any
movement reminds me of approaching age." The old lady smiled as if that
time were still far ahead.

"I am sure you ought to take care of yourself," said Miss Hamelyn. "I
hope you will not allow Goneril to fatigue you."

"Gonerilla! What a pretty name! Charming! I suppose it is in your
family?" asked the old lady.

Miss Hamelyn blushed a little, for her niece's name was a sore point
with her.

"It's an awful name for any Christian woman," said a deep voice at the
door. "And pray, who's called Goneril?"

Miss Prunty came forward: a short, thick-set woman of fifty, with fine
dark eyes, and, even in a Florentine summer, with something stiff and
masculine in the fashion of her dress.

"And have you brought your niece?" she said, as she turned to Miss
Hamelyn.

"Yes, she is in the garden."

"Well, I hope she understands that she'll have to rough it here."

"Goneril is a very simple girl," said Miss Hamelyn.

"So it's she that's called Goneril?"

"Yes," said the aunt, making an effort. "Of course I am aware of the
strangeness of the name, but--but, in fact, my brother was devotedly
attached to his wife, who died at Goneril's birth."

"Whew!" whistled Miss Prunty. "The parson must have been a fool who
christened her!"

"He did, in fact, refuse; but my brother would have no baptism saving
with that name, which, unfortunately, it is impossible to shorten."

"I think it is a charming name!" said Madame Petrucci, coming to the
rescue. "Gonerilla--it dies on one's lips like music! And if you do not
like it, Brigida, what's in a name? as your charming Byron said."

"I hope we shall make her happy," said Miss Prunty.

"Of course we shall!" cried the elder lady.

"Goneril is easily made happy," asserted Miss Hamelyn.

"That's a good thing," snapped Miss Prunty, "for there's not much here to
make her so!"

"O Brigida! I am sure there are many attractions. The air, the view,
the historic association! and, more than all, you know there is always a
chance of the signorino!"

"Of whom?" said Miss Hamelyn, rather anxiously.

"Of him!" cried Madame Petrucci, pointing to the engraving opposite.
"He lives, of course, in the capital; but he rents the villa behind our
house,--the Medici Villa,--and when he i