good-humoured roar, not very offensive to any man, and apparently
acceptable enough to some ladies. He was a big burly man, near to
fifty as I suppose, somewhat awkward in his gait, and somewhat loud
in his laugh. But though nigh to fifty, and thus ungainly, he liked
to be smiled on by pretty women, and liked, as some said, to be
flattered by them also. If so, he should have been happy, for the
ladies at Rome at that time made much of Conrad Mackinnon.

Of Mrs. Mackinnon no one did make very much, and yet she was one of
the sweetest, dearest, quietest, little creatures that ever made
glad a man's fireside. She was exquisitely pretty, always in good
humour, never stupid, self-denying to a fault, and yet she was
generally in the background. She would seldom come forward of her
own will, but was contented to sit behind her teapot and hear
Mackinnon do his roaring. He was certainly much given to what the
world at Rome called flirting, but this did not in the least annoy
her. She was twenty years his junior, and yet she never flirted
with any one. Women would tell her--good-natured friends--how
Mackinnon went on; but she received such tidings as an excellent
joke, observing that he had always done the same, and no doubt
always would until he was ninety. I do believe that she was a happy
woman; and yet I used to think that she should have been happier.
There is, however, no knowing the inside of another man's house, or
reading the riddles of another man's joy and sorrow.

We had also there another lion,--a lion cub,--entitled to roar a
little, and of him also I must say something. Charles O'Brien was a
young man, about twenty-five years of age, who had sent out from his
studio in the preceding year a certain bust, supposed by his
admirers to be unsurpassed by any effort of ancient or modern