illiant eccentricity, which distinguishes him from other people; but
there is nothing which frightens away the average desirable husband so
much as anything of that sort in the young lady of his affections, and
every married woman knows it very well.

The excellent Countess used to wish that her daughter would grow up more
like other girls, and in the sincere belief that a little womanly vanity
must certainly counteract a desire for super-feminine mental
cultivation, she honestly tried to interest Cecilia in such frivolities
as dress, dancing, and romantic fiction. The result was only very
partially successful. Cecilia was dressed to perfection, without seeming
to take any trouble about it, and she danced marvellously before she had
ever been to a ball; but she cared nothing for the novels she was
allowed to read, and she devoured serious books with increasing
intellectual voracity.

Her stepfather laughed, and said that the girl was a genius and ought
not to be hampered by ordinary rules; and his wife, who had at first
feared lest he should dislike the child of her first husband, was only
too glad that he should, on the contrary, show something like paternal
infatuation for Cecilia, since no children of his own were born to him.
He was a man, too, of wide reading and experience, and having
considerable political insight into his times. Before Cecilia was eleven
years old he talked to her about serious matters, as if she had been
grown up, and often wished that the child should be at table and in the
drawing-room when men who were making history came informally to the
embassy. Cecilia had listened to their talk, and had remembered a very
large part of what she had heard, understanding more and more as she
grew up; and by far the greatest sorrow of her life had been the death
of her stepfather.

She was a modern Italian girl, and her mother was a Roman who had been
brought up in something of the old strictness and narrowness, first in a
convent, and afterwards in a rather gloomy home under the shadow of the
most rigid parental authority. Exceptional gifts, exceptional
surroundings, and exceptional opportunities had made Cecilia Palladio an
exception to all types, and as unlike the average modern Italian young
girl as could be imagined.

The sun had already set as the mother and daughter drove away, but it
was still broad day, and a canopy of golden clouds, floating high over
the city, reflected rosy lights through th