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CHAPTER XII.
In three weeks' time Lady Hilda returned from Rome.
She had been affectionately received by the Holy Father; she had been the idol of the nobles of the Black; she had bought a quantity of pictures, and marbles, and bronzes, and Castellani jewellery; she had gone to early mass every day, and ridden hard every day; she had thought Totila would have been more bearable than Signor Rosa, and she had shuddered at the ruined flora of the Colosseum and the scrapings and bedaubings of the Palace of the Cæsars.
She returned contemptuous, disgusted, tired of the age she lived in, and regretful that she
