"An English lady and her daughter," was the reply; and the clerk, who was not noted for suavity of manner, turned to a little bright-eyed, black haired girl, who came up, evidently with the intention of preferring some request.
There was something in the toss of the curly head, and the saucy look in the eyes, and the slightly upward turn of the nose, which always commanded attention from the rudest of porters and clerks: and this one at the Quirinal bowed respectfully to her, and was about to ask what he could do for her, when Grey interrupted him with another question, or rather assertion and question both: "The young lady is sick. What is the matter with her?"
A flush of annoyance passed over the clerk's face, as he replied: "A severe cold, taken in Naples. What can I do for you, Miss Meredith?"
And he loftily bowed Grey aside to make room for the young girl, whose black eyes flashed upon Grey with a half-comical expression, and whose shoulders shrugged involuntarily as she heard the clerk's explanation.
"I will ask the names of the English lady and her daughter another time," Grey thought, as he moved away to make room for the young lady.
He had finished his breakfast, an hour later, and was making his way from the winter garden into the parlor, when he again encountered the young girl with the bright, laughing black eyes.
"Excuse me," she said, flashing upon him a bright, bewildering smile. "I looked on the register, and found that you are Mr. Grey Jerrold, of whom I have heard Sir Jack Trevellian speak. Sir Hal, from whom Sir Jack inherited Trevellian Castle, was my cousin, and I used to live there before poor Hal was killed. I am Flossie Meredith, and live now with my grandmother, at Port Rush, in Ireland."
Grey bowed low to the vivacious little lady, who went on rapidly, gesticulating as she talked, and emphasizing what she said with most expressive shrugs and elevations of her eyelids and nose: "I heard what that horrid clerk at the bureau told you ailed the young lady in No.----. A severe cold, indeed! I should think it was. It is the typhoid fever of the very worst form, and if you are afraid of it you had better change your room. There are awful big cracks over and under the door. I have stopped them up with paper as well as I can, but the air can get through, and you might take the fever. The gentleman who occupied the room before you came, left it in a hurry when he heard of the fever, but I don't know where he went to escape it, for it's all over the hotel. There is an American girl on the same floor, whom they think is dying this morning, and a young man down stairs, and two or three more somewhere else; and yet the clerks will tell you there is not a single case of fever in the hotel. What liars they are, to be sure! Grandma is frightened almost to death, and burns sugar, and camphor, and brimstone, as disinfectants, and keeps chloride of lime under her bed, till her room smells worse, if possible, than the hotel itself. But I am not afraid. My room adjoins Bessie's, and I am with her half the time."