"
"_Upon my word!_"
It was Mrs. Portheris, in the doorway behind us, just arrived from
Siena.
* * * * *
I mentioned the matter to my parents, thinking it might amuse them, and
it did. From a business point of view, however, poppa could not help
feeling a certain amount of sympathy for the Count. "I hope, daughter,"
he said, "you didn't give him the ha-ha to his face."
CHAPTER XIII.
There is the very tenderness of desolation upon the Appian Way. To me it
suggested nothing of the splendour of Roman villas and the tragedy of
flying Emperors. It spoke only of itself, lying over the wide silence of
the noon-day fields, historic doubtless, but noon-day certainly.
Something lives upon the warm stretches of the Appian Way, something
that talks of the eternal and unchangeable, and yet has the pathos of
the fragmentary and the lost. Perhaps it is the ghost of a genius that
has failed of reincarnation, and inspires the weeds and the leaf-shadows
instead. Thinking of it, one remembers only an almond tree in flower,
that grew beside a ruined arch by the wayside--both quite alone in the
sunlight--and perhaps of a meek, young, marble Cecilia, unquestioningly
prostrate, submissive to the axe.
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