window were the two little Napoleonic heads, with big, black eyes,
strong chins, and dark hair streaked across wide, olive-coloured
foreheads. A vision of papa was visible in the garden pruning a vine
with gloves on his aristocratic hands, and a shabby velvet coat on his
highly connected back. Also, afar off on the balcony--oh, sight to touch
a maiden's heart!--was the young count gazing wistfully towards Albano.
He did not see the charmers as they crept down the rough road close to
the garden wall, and went sadly home, along the blooming path, to the
'Tomb of the Four Thimbles,' as Livy irreverently called the ruin which
has an ornament at each of its corners like a gigantic thimble of stone.

A note in Amanda's most elegant French, declining the apartments in the
name of Madame Duenna, closed the door of this Eden upon the wandering
peris, who entered never more. Now and then, as they went clattering by
on their donkeys to Lake Nemi, or some other picturesque spot,

They saw again the crocus bloom,
And, leaning from that lofty room,
Sir Launcelot with face of gloom
Look down to Camelot.
Up flew their veils and floated wide,
But Livy pinned them to her side,
'The curse has come upon us!' cried
The ladies of Shalott.

The second adventure befell Amanda alone, and in this wise.

Going one day to Rome, on business, she found herself shut up in a car
with a gorgeous officer and a meek young man, who read papers all the
way. The tall soldier, in his gray and silver uniform, with a furred,
frogged, and braided jacket, not to mention the high boots or the
becoming cap, was so very polite to the lone lady that she could not
remain dumb without positive rudeness. So Amanda conversed in her most
charming manner, finding inspiration doubtless in the dark eyes and
musical voice of her handsome _vis-a-vis_, for the officers from Turin
are things of beauty and joys for ever to those who love to look on
manly men.

Among other things, the two had a little joke about the Baron
Rothschild, who rode about Albano on a tiny donkey with two servants
behind him; also the Baroness, a painfully plain woman, with an ugly dog
the image of herself.

When they arrived at Rome, however, their joke was turned against them,
by the discovery that the meek man was the Baron's secretary, who would
doubtless repeat their chat at head-quarters. To see the handsome man
slap his brow, and the