this awful responsibility any longer; for I
am very sure you will both be off to Turin with those handsome rascals
if we stay much longer. My mind is made up, and I won't hear a word.'

Thus Lavinia, with a stern countenance; for the romantic old lady felt
the charm as much as the girls did, and decided that discretion was the
better part of valour for the whole party.

'I should never dare to go home and tell my honoured parents that Mat
had run away with a man as handsome as Jove, and as poor as Job.
Amanda's indignant relatives would rise up and stone me if I let her
canter into matrimony with the fascinating Colonel, who may have a wife
and ten children in Turin, for all we know. They _must_ be torn away at
once, or my character as duenna is lost for ever.'

Having made up her mind, Livy steeled her heart to all appeals, and
wrote letters, packed trunks, and watched her little flock like a
vigilant sheep-dog.

How she would ever have got them through that last week is very
uncertain, if a providential picnic had not helped her.

A fair was held in the town, and a delightful surprise-party was got up
among the artists of Rome. Twenty-five came driving over in a big
carriage, with four gaily decorated horses, postilions, hampers of
lunch, flutes and horns, and much jollity bottled up for the occasion.

A very festive spectacle they made as they drove through the narrow
streets with flowers and streamers in their hats, singing and joking in
true artistic style.

They meant to have lunched in the open air; but, as it was cloudy,
decided to spread the feast at the hotel. Such a delightful revel as
followed! A scene from the 'Decameron,' modernised, would give some idea
of it; for after the banquet all adjourned to the gardens of the Doria
Villa, and there disported themselves as merrily as if all the plagues
of life were quite forgotten, and death itself among the lost arts.
Flirting and dancing, charades and singing, stories and statues, poems
and pictures, gossip and gambols, absorbed the hours as pleasantly as in
the olden time. And if the costumes were not as picturesque as those in
Vedder's fine picture, the ladies were as lovely, the gentlemen as
gallant, and all much better behaved than those of Boccaccio's party.

A few drops of rain quenched the fun at its height, and sent the
revellers home as fast as four horses could take them, leaving the town
gaping after them, and our ladies much enlivened by the