But the kind of society which gathers round the English peer of old family who takes an apartment in Rome or Florence for the winter was quite familiar to him--the travelling English men and women of the same class, diplomats of all nations, high ecclesiastics, a cardinal or two, the heads of the great artistic or archaeological schools, Americans, generals, senators, deputies--with just a sprinkling of young men.

A girl of this girl's age and rank would have many opportunities, of course, of meeting young men, in the free and fascinating life of the Roman spring, but primarily her business in her mother's salon would have been to help her mother, to make herself agreeable to the older men, and to gather her education--in art, literature, and politics--as a coming woman of the world from their talk.

The Master could see her smiling on a monsignore, carrying tea to a cardinal, or listening to the Garibaldian tales of some old veteran of the Risorgimento.
"It is an education--of its own kind," he thought.

"Is it worth more or less than other kinds ?" And he looked round paternally on some of the young girl students then just penetrating Oxford; fresh, pleasant faces--little positive beauty--and on many the stamp, already prematurely visible, of the anxieties of life for those who must earn a livelihood.

Not much taste in dress, which was often clumsy and unbecoming; hair, either untidy, or treated as an enemy, scraped back, held in, the sole object being to take as little time over it as possible; and, in general, the note upon them all of an educated and thrifty middle-class.