'I don't know what to say. I am afraid I shall not find anything likely to please you.'
'I don't want you to talk with a view to pleasing me. I hate a man who does. I want you to say things that I shall demolish.'
'This place. Tell me what was your first feeling on coming in.'
'I thought I should like to have been born in the time of the Medicis, when there were only two thoughts in days of peace--religion and the arts.'
'Do you mean you would like to have been born under the Medicis, in Italy?'
'Yes; in Florence or Venice. Venice by preference.'
'But the religion of Venice was not the religion you now hold.'
'No; but it was the best religion of those days; and if I had lived and died then, I should most likely never have felt any perplexity.'
'Yes, now and then. Not in essentials, but in small matters; and perplexities of this kind wear one down.'
She looked at him with scornful compassion for a few seconds, and then said,--
'You are very young; you are no more than fourteen or fifteen. I can see what your fate will be.'
He looked at her with quick trouble in his eyes.
'I have often wondered if there is any danger of that.'
'As sure as your name is George Osborne, that is what your fate will be.'
'I think I should rather die,' he whispered, 'than desert the pure simple faith I was brought up in.'
'Then,' she said, with a bright smile, 'it will be with you as it was with the Italian patriots, a case of _Roma o morte_.'
She sang the last words under her breath, to the air of the 'Inno Nazionale.'
He looked around in horror, to ascertain if anyone had heard her. No one was near.
'Pray, Miss Gordon, don't sing. The people here have great ideas of the sanctity of this place, and anything like a profanation would be badly received.'
'Then take me away from this place. I am not good enough to be here.'
He looked down at her. The expression of alarm and reproach faded from his eyes, to be succeeded by one of wonder, followed by that yearning regard of unperfected love. When he spoke, his voice was thick.
'You not good enough to be here that are beautiful enough for heaven!'
'Come,' she said, archly, 'if I may not sing, you shall not bow down and worship a graven image here. I have had plenty of heavy matters; and as for compliments, he must be a very original man who pays me one I have not had already. I see a lot of names I know about here. Is this the Poets' Corner?'