'Pieces of perfume-bottles that the grave-digger in Palestrina found in an old Etruscan tomb. There were some bronze mirrors, and the most wonderful gold necklace--I wanted it dreadfully, but he didn't dare sell it; it's gone to a museum in Rome. Aren't these pieces of glass lovely, though? I am going to have them set in gold and made into pins.'
'Here's a little bottle that's scarcely broken.' Eleanor held it up before the candle and let the light play upon its surface. 'Who do you suppose owned it before you, Marcia?'
'Some girl who turned to dust centuries ago.'
'And her necklaces and mirrors and perfume-bottles still exist. What a commentary!'
'Thank goodness, they don't put such things in one's coffin nowadays,' said Marcia; 'or twenty-five hundred years from now some other girl would be saying the same of us.'
'Twenty-five hundred years,' Eleanor murmured. 'I declare, my nine seasons sink into insignificance!' She dropped the bottle into its tray and leaned back in her chair with a little laugh. 'America is a bit tame, isn't it, after Italy? One doesn't get so many emotions.'
'I'm not sure but one gets too many in Italy,' said Marcia.
'I don't know. It's so much easier not to make up one's mind. I shall probably stay a year or so longer with Uncle Howard.'
'I like your uncle, Marcia. He has a very taking way of saying funny things without smiling.'
'And as for Mr. Sybert----' Margaret put in mockingly.
'I think he's about the most interesting man I've met in Europe,' Eleanor agreed imperturbably.
'The most interesting man you've met in Europe?' Marcia opened her eyes. The statement was sweeping, and Eleanor had had experience. 'How do you mean?' she asked.
'Well,' said Eleanor, with the judicial air of a connoisseur, 'for one thing, he has a striking face. I don't know whether you ever noticed it, but he has eyes exactly like that portrait of Filippino Lippi in the Uffizi. I kept thinking about it all the time I was talking to him--sleepy sort of Italian eyes, you know--and an American mouth. It makes an interesting combination; you keep wondering what a man like that will do.'
As Marcia made no comment, she continued:
'He has an awfully interesting history. We met him at a reception last week, and Mr. Melville told me all about him afterward. He was born in Genoa--his father was United States consul--and he was brought up in the midst of the excitement during the fight for Italian unity. Politics was in the air he breathed. He knows more about the Italians than they know about themselves. He speaks the language like a native, and he never----'