were ladies and gentlemen in fashionable clothes, peasants in the gayest costumes, surprised-looking tourists in tall hats and linen dusters, harlequins, clowns, devils, nuns, dominoes of every colour - red, white, blue, black; above, the balconies bloomed like a rose garden with pretty faces framed in lace veils or picturesque hats. Flowers were everywhere wreathed along the house fronts, tied to the horses' ears, in ladies' hands and gentlemen's button holes, while vendors went up and down the street bearing great trays of violets and carnations and camellias for sale. The air was full of cries and laughter, and the shrill calls of merchants advertising their wares - candy, fruit, birds, lanterns, and confetti, the latter being merely lumps of lime, large or small, with a pea or a bean embedded in each lump to give it weight. Boxes full of this unpleasant confection were suspended in front of each balcony, with tin scoops to use in ladling it out and flinging it about. Everybody wore or carried a wire mask as protection against this white, incessant shower, and before long the air became full of a fine dust, which hung above the Corso like a mist, and filled the eyes and noses and clothes of all present with irritating particles.

Pasquino's Car was passing underneath just as Katy and Mrs Ashe arrived - a gorgeous affair, hung with silken draperies, and bearing as symbol an enormous egg in which the carnival was supposed to be in act of incubation. A huge wagon followed in its wake, on which was a house some sixteen feet square, whose sole occupant was a gentleman attended by five servants, who kept him supplied with confetti, which he showered liberally on the heads of the crowd. Then came a car in the shape of a steamboat, with a smoke pipe and sails, over which flew the Union Jack, and which was manned with a party wearing the dress of British tars. The next wagon bore a company of jolly maskers equipped with many coloured instruments, which they banged and rattled as they went along. Following this was a troupe of beautiful circus horses, cream coloured with scarlet trappings, or sorrel with blue, ridden by ladies in pale-green velvet laced with silver, or blue velvet and gold. Another car bore a bird cage which was an exact imitation of St Peter's, within which perched a lonely old parrot. This device evidently had a political significance, for it was alternately hissed and applauded as it went along. The whole scene was like a brilliant, rapidly-shifting dream, and Katy, as she stood with lips apart and eyes wide open with wonderment and pleasure, forgot whether she existed or not - forgot everything except what was passing before her gaze.

She was roused by a stinging shower of lime dust. An Englishman on the next balcony had taken courteous advantage of her preoccupation, and had flung a scoopful of confetti in her undefended face! It is generally Anglo-Saxons of the less refined class, English or Americans, who do these things at carnival times. The national love of a rough joke comes to the surface, encouraged by the licence of the moment, and all the grace and prettiness of the festival vanish. Katy laughed and dusted herself as well as she could, and took refuge behind her mask, while a nimble American boy of the party changed places with her, and thenceforward made that particular Englishman his special target, plying such a lively and adroit shovel as to make Katy's assailant rue the hour when he evoked this national reprisal. His powdered head and rather clumsy efforts to retaliate excited shouts of laughter from the adjoining balconies. The young American, fresh from tennis and college athletics, darted about and dodged with an agility impossible to his heavily-built foe, and each effective shot and parry on his side was greeted with little cries of applause and the clapping of hands on the part of those who were watching the contest.

Exactly opposite them was a balcony hung with white silk, in which sat a lady who seemed to be of some distinction, for every now and then an officer in brilliant uniform, or some official covered with orders and stars, would be shown in by her servants, bow before her with the utmost deference, and after a little conversation retire, kissing her gloved hand as he went. The lady was a beautiful person, with lustrous black eyes and dark hair, over which a lace mantilla was fastened with diamond stars. She wore pale blue with white flowers, and altogether, as Katy afterwards wrote to Clover, reminded her exactly of one of those beautiful princesses whom they used to act plays about in their childhood and quarrel over, because every one of them wanted to be the princess and nobody else.

`I wonder who she is?' said Mrs Ashe in a low tone. `She might be almost anybody from her looks. She keeps glancing across to us, Katy. Do you know, I think she has taken a fancy to you.'