and ambitions; and the young girl
really loved her mother when not irritated by some speech or action that
offended her taste. That her mother should not always understand her
seemed quite natural.

They had almost reached their door, the great pillared porch of the
mysterious Palazzo Massimo, in which they had an apartment, for they did
not live in the villa where the garden party was to be given. Cecilia's
gloved hand went out quietly to the Countess's and gently pressed it.

"Let me think my own thoughts, mother," she said; "they shall never hurt
you."

"Yes, dear, of course," answered the elder woman meekly, her little
burst of temper having already subsided.

Cecilia left her early that evening and went to her own room to be
alone. It was not that she was tired, nor painfully affected by a
strange sensation she had felt during the afternoon; but she realised
that she had reached the end of the first stage in life, and that
another was going to begin, and it was part of her nature to seek for a
complete understanding of everything in her existence. It seemed to her
unworthy of a thinking being to act or to feel, without clearly defining
the cause of every feeling and action. Youth dreams of an impossible
completeness in carrying out its self-set rules of perfection, and is
swayed and stunned, and often paralysed, when they are broken to pieces
by rebellious human nature.

The room was very large and dim, for Cecilia had put out the electric
light, and had lit two big wax candles, of the sort that are burned in
churches. The blinds and shutters of the windows were open, and the
moonlight fell in two broad floods upon the pale carpet, half across the
floor. The white bed with its high canopy of lace looked ghostly against
the furthest wall, like a marble sepulchre under a mist. The light blue
damask on the walls was dark in the gloom, and there was not much
furniture to break the long surfaces. The dusky air was cool and pure,
for Cecilia detested perfumes of all sorts.

She sat motionless in a high carved seat, just in the moonlight, one
hand upon an arm of the chair, the other on her breast. She had gathered
her hair into a knot, low at the back of her head, and the folds of a
soft white robe just followed the outlines of her figure. The table on
which the candles stood was a little behind her, and away from the
window, and the still yellow light only touched her hair in one or two
places, sending back dull g