Bantling, whom it was apparently delightful to her to hear speak
of Julius Caesar as a "cheeky old boy," and Ralph addressed such
elucidations as he was prepared to offer to the attentive ear of our
heroine. One of the humble archaeologists who hover about the place
had put himself at the disposal of the two, and repeated his lesson
with a fluency which the decline of the season had done nothing to
impair. A process of digging was on view in a remote corner of the
Forum, and he presently remarked that if it should please the
signori to go and watch it a little they might see something of
interest. The proposal commended itself more to Ralph than to
Isabel, weary with much wandering; so that she admonished her
companion to satisfy his curiosity while she patiently awaited his
return. The hour and the place were much to her taste- she should
enjoy being briefly alone. Ralph accordingly went off with the
cicerone while Isabel sat down on a prostrate column near the
foundations of the Capitol. She wanted a short solitude, but she was
not long to enjoy it. Keen as was her interest in the rugged relics of
the Roman past that lay scattered about her and in which the corrosion
of centuries had still left so much of individual life, her
thoughts, after resting a while on these things, had wandered, by a
concatenation of stages it might require some subtlety to trace, to
regions and objects charged with a more active appeal.
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