most interest,--the beautiful houses recently excavated, the homes of
Glaucus, of Pansa, of Sallust, of Orpheus, of Diomedes and very many
others; the forum, temples, and amphitheatre--they sat long amid the
ruins, looking at the fatal mountain, so close at hand, and the
desolation at its foot, and meditated upon the terrors of that fearful
night.

Malcom read aloud the story as related by Pliny, a volume of whose
letters he had put into his pocket, and Margery recited some lines of a
beautiful sonnet on Pompeii which she had once learned, whose author she
did not remember:--

"No chariot wheels invade her stony roads;
Priestless her temples, lone her vast abodes,
Deserted,--forum, palace, everywhere!
Yet are her chambers for the master fit,
Her shops are ready for the oil and wine,
Ploughed are her streets with many a chariot line,
And on her walls to-morrow's play is writ,--
Of that to-morrow which might never be!"

The spell was not broken until Mr. Sumner, looking at his watch,
declared it was quite time they should return to the little hotel, take
an afternoon lunch, and so be ready when the carriages should await
them.

The beauty of the drive from Naples to the Bay of Salerno has been set
forth, by many writers, in prose and song and poem, and remembering
this, Barbara's and Bettina's faces were radiant with expectation as
they started upon it. Malcom and Margery were in the carriage with them;