"A little after midnight!" I echoed. "But that would be awful! What would they think? And oh, see, the cloud's over the moon! Ugh, how dark it is. We shall certainly be run down. Couldn't we call for help?"

"We are a long way already from the shore," said the Prince; "and besides it is not dignified to shout. By and by some one will come. Meanwhile, let us enjoy ourselves. Dear Countess, I confess I brought you here to-night—your birthday night—for a purpose. Will you listen while I tell you what it is?"

"Sh! Wait one minute. Aren't those voices in the distance, and don't you see something big and dark bearing down upon us?"

"They exist but in your imagination," answered the Prince; "Or is it only that you wish to put me off?"

"Oh, no; I wouldn't be so rude," said I. "Please excuse me." But I was on pins and needles, trying to keep an eye in every direction at once (as if I'd had a headlight in my face) and to make the most of my situation at the same time.

"Then I will no longer strain my patience," cried the Prince in a warm voice. "Dearest Countess, I am at your feet."

And so he was, for he went right down on his knees in the bottom of the boat, kneeling on my dress so that I couldn't have stirred an inch if I'd wanted to, which I didn't; for I meant to accept him. He had had only my right hand, but now he seized the left, too, and began to kiss, first one, and then the other, as if I'd been a queen.

This was the first time a man had ever gone down on his knees to me, for the Prince is the only foreign gentleman I ever knew, and Mr. Kidder proposed in a buggy. Afraid as I was of a collision, I was enjoying myself very much, when suddenly a horrid thing happened. A great white light pounced upon us like a hawk on a chicken, and focussed on us as if we were a tableau. It was so bright, shining all over us and into our eyes, that it made everything else except just the Prince and me, and our boat, look black, as if it were raining ink. And we were so taken aback with surprise, that for an instant or two we kept our position exactly as if we were sitting for our photographs, the Prince kneeling at my feet and kissing my hands, I bending down my face over his head.

I never experienced such a moment in my life, and the thought flashed into my head that it was Simon's ghost come to forbid my second marriage. This idea was so frightful, that it was actually a relief to hear a vulgar shout of laughter coming from the other end of the light, wherever that was.

The Prince recovered before I did, and jerked himself up to a sitting posture on the seat, exclaiming something in German, which I am afraid was swearing.

"Those Italian ruffians of the douane, with their disgusting search-light!" he sputtered in English when he was recovering himself a little. "But do not derange yourself, Countess. They have seen that we are not smugglers, which is one advantage, because they will not trouble us any more."

Of course, my evening was spoiled. I tried to laugh it off and say how Providential it was they had come to our rescue; but though I kept telling myself every minute that there was no need for me to mind Beechy, I dreaded meeting her alone. However, the evil moment wouldn't be put off forever, and she came along the balcony from her window to mine when I had shut myself up in my bedroom.

I expected her to fly out at me, but her manner was the same as usual.

"Want me to undo your frock behind, Mamma?" she asked.

Then, when she had got me half unhooked: "Tell me what the Prince said when he proposed."

"He didn't propose," said I.

"If he didn't I shall ask Sir Ralph to call him out. He'd no business kissing your hands unless he'd proposed."

I was surprised at this attitude. But it made me feel confidential. "He hadn't had a chance," I volunteered. "He was just going to, when the search-light—"

"—Searched. Lucky for you the interruption came at the right moment."

"Why? I thought—"

"Because it saved you the pain of refusing him."

"But, Beechy darling, I don't think I was going to refuse him."

"Don't you? Well, I do. I'm sure of it."

"Dearest, if you wouldn't look at me in that square-chinned way! It's so like your poor Papa."

"I'm Papa's daughter. But I don't intend to be Prince Dalmar-Kalm's step-daughter."

I began to cry a little. "Why do you always try to thwart me when I want to be happy?" I asked.

"That isn't fair to say. Look at my short dress and my hair in pigtails. There's proof enough of what I'm ready to do to make you happy. I let you be a Countess, and you may be a Princess if you can buy the title, but no Princes on this ranch!"

My blood was up, and I determined to fight. "Beechy," I exclaimed. "I guess I've a right to do as I like, and I will. It's for your good as well as mine, for me to marry a title, and I'm going to. I shall say 'yes' when the Prince proposes."

"He won't propose," said she, suddenly as cool as if she had been in a refrigerator.

"He will, the minute I give him the opportunity, and I shall to-morrow; I don't care what you do."

"I bet he won't. I'll bet you a good deal. Anything you like, except the long dress I've got in my trunk, and the package of hairpins in my grip."

"What makes you think he won't?" I asked, worried by her manner, which was odd.

"I know he won't."

"You know the Prince will never propose to me?"

She nodded.

I flew at her, and took her by the shoulders, as if she'd been seven instead of—her present age.

"You cruel girl!" I exclaimed. "You're going to tell him how old I am, and—and a lot of hateful things."

"No, I'm not, and for a good reason. It wouldn't change his mind. So long as your banking account's all right, he wouldn't care if you were Methusaleh. I shan't tell him anything about you. I shan't mention your name. But he won't propose."

"What are you going to do?" I stammered.

"That's my secret."

"Oh, you have got something in your head?"

She nodded again. "And up my sleeve."

"You will poison his mind."

"No, I won't. I shall only—play dolls."

And she went on unfastening my waist.

PART IV

XVII

Well, perhaps, even though I can never find the way there, I can see the days' portraits painted in rows in the picture gallery of a house I own. It isn't a very big house yet, but at least one new room is being built onto it every year, and lately it has grown faster than ever before, though the architecture has improved. Fancy my being a householder! But I am, and so is everybody. We all have the House of our Past, of which we alone have a key, and whenever we wish, we can steal softly, secretly in, by dim passages, to enter rooms sealed to the whole world except ourselves.

I have been making the picture gallery in mine, since I left America; but the pictures I care for most have been put up since I began motoring.

I suppose some very rich natures can be rich without travel, for they are born with caskets already full of jewels; but ordinary folk have empty caskets if they keep them shut up always in one safe, and I begin to see that mine were but poor things. I keep them wide open now, and every day, every hour, a beautiful new pearl or diamond drops in.

It seems strange to remember how reluctant I was to come away. I thought there could be nothing more beautiful, more satisfying to eyes and heart, than my home. The white, colonial house set back from the broad Hudson River among locust trees and tall, rustling maples; the sloping lawn, with the beds of geranium and verbena; the garden with its dear, old-fashioned flowers—holly-hocks, sweet-williams, bleeding-hearts, grass pinks, and yellow roses; the grey-green hills across the water; that picture stood to me for all that was ideal on earth. And then, the Sisters, with their soft ways and soft voices, their white robes and pale blue, floating veils; how their gracious figures blended with and accentuated the peaceful charm of the scene, shut away from the storms of this world throughout their lives!

I was partly right, for of its kind there could be nothing more beautiful than that picture, but my mistake was in the narrow-minded wish to let one suffice. I rejoice now in every new one I have hung up, and shall rejoice all the more when I am back again myself—just one of those white figures that flit across the old canvas.

Yes, I shall be one of those figures, of course. The Mother has always told me it was my true vocation; that peace and leisure for reflection and concentration of mind were the greatest earthly blessings a woman could have. Ever since, as a very small girl, I longed for the day when I should be allowed to wear one of those pretty, trailing, white cashmere dresses and long, pale blue veils, I have looked forward to joining the Sisterhood of good women who alone have ever given me love and the protection of home.

Nothing has happened to change my intentions, and they are not changed. Only, I'm not homesick any more, as I used to be in the feverish Paris days, or even on the Riviera, when we did very little but rush back and forth between Monte Carlo and Cap Martin, with Prince Dalmar-Kalm and his friends.

I shall go home and carry out the plans I've had for all these years, but—I shall live—live—live—every single minute till the time comes for my good-bye to the world

I should have liked to stay a month at Bellagio (with the wonderful garden of Serbelloni to explore from end to end), instead of the two days that we did stop; still, the moment our start was arranged, I was perfectly happy at the thought of being in the car again.

There was a discussion as to how we should begin the journey to Lecco and Desenzano, where we were to sleep one night, for our difficulty lay in the fact that there's but one road on which you can drive away from the wooded, wedge-like promontory which Bellagio pushes out into the lake; the steep, narrow road up to Civenna and down again to Canzo and Asso, by which we had come. As our car had done the climb and descent so well, Mr. Barrymore wanted to do it again, perhaps with a wicked desire to force the Prince into accompanying us or seeming timid about the capabilities of his automobile. But when Aunt Kathryn discovered how easy the alternative was (simply to put the car on a steamer as far as Varenna, then running along a good road from there southward to Lecco), she said that Mr. Barrymore's way would be tempting Providence, with whose designs, I must say she appears to have an intimate acquaintance. Heaven had spared us the first time, she argued, but now if we deliberately flew in its face, it would certainly not be considerate on a second occasion.

I was ready so much earlier on the last morning than Aunt Kathryn or Beechy, that I ordered coffee and rolls for myself alone on the terrace; and they had just appeared when Mr. Barrymore came out. He was going presently to see to the car, so naturally we had breakfast together, with an addition of some exquisite wild strawberries, gleaming like cabouchon rubies under a froth of whipped cream. It was only eight o'clock, when we finished, and he said there would be time for one last stroll through the divinest garden in Italy, if I cared for it. Of course I did care, so we walked together up the rose-bordered path from the sweet-smelling flower-zone to the pine-belt that culminates in the pirates' castle. While we stood looking down over the three arms of the lake in their glittering blue sleeves, a voice spoke behind us: "Ah, Miss Destrey, I've found you at last. Your cousin asked me to look for you and bring you back as soon as possible. You are urgently wanted for something, though what was not confided to me."

The Prince used to be troublesome when he first attached himself to our party. If ever he happened to meet me in the big hall or the garden of the hotel at Cap Martin, when neither Aunt Kathryn nor Beechy was with me, he always made some pretext to talk and pay me stupid compliments, though he would flee if my relations came in sight. After the trip began, however, his manner was suddenly different, and he showed no more desire for my society than I for his; therefore I was surprised by an equally sudden change this morning. It was hardly to be defined in words, but it was very noticeable. Even his way of looking at me was not the same. At Cap Martin it used to be rather bold, as if I were the kind of person who ought to be flattered by any attention from a Prince Dalmar-Kalm. Later, if he glanced at me at all, it was with an odd expression, as if he wished me to regret something, I really couldn't imagine what. But now there was a sort of reverence in his gaze and manner, as if I were a queen and he were one of my courtiers. As I'm not a queen, and wouldn't care to have him for a courtier if I were, I wasn't pleased when he attempted to keep at my side going down by the narrow path up which Mr. Barrymore and I had walked together. He didn't precisely thrust Mr. Barrymore out of the way, but seemed to take it for granted, as it were by right of his rank, that it was for him, not the others to walk beside me.

I resented this, for to my mind it is horribly caddish for a person to snub another not his equal in fortune; and as Mr. Barrymore never pushes himself forward when people behave as if he were their inferior, I determined to show unmistakably which man I valued more. Consequently, when the Prince persisted in keeping at my shoulder, I turned and talked over it to Mr. Barrymore following behind. But on the terrace level with the hotel he had to leave us, for the automobile was to be shipped on board a cargo-boat that sailed for Varenna some time before ours.

"Why are you always unkind to me? Have I been so unfortunate as to vex you in any way?" asked the Prince, when we were alone.

"I am neither kind nor unkind," I replied in a practical, dry sort of tone. "I am going in now to see why they want me."

"Please don't be in such a hurry," said the Prince. "Perhaps I made Miss Beechy's message too urgent, for I had seen you with the chauffeur, and I could not bear that you should be alone with him."

"It is stupid to speak of Mr. Barrymore as the chauffeur," I exclaimed in a rage. "And it's not your affair Prince, to concern yourself with my actions."

With that I darted into the long corridor that opens from the terrace, and left him furiously tugging at his moustache.

"Did you send the Prince to call me in, Beechy?" I asked, after I had tapped at her door.

"I happened to see the Prince and have a little talk with him in the garden a few minutes ago," said she, "and I told him if he saw you he might say we'd be glad if you'd come. Mamma's in such a stew finishing her packing, and it would be nice if you'd help shut the dressing-bag."

Aunt Kathryn hadn't been herself, it seemed to me, during our two days at Bellagio. This morning she had a headache, and though I'd hoped that she would walk down to the boat with the Prince, she decided to take the hotel omnibus, so I was pestered with him once more. Beechy and Sir Ralph were having an argument of some sort (in which I heard that funny nickname "the Chauffeulier" occur several times), and as Mr. Barrymore had gone ahead with the car and our luggage, the Prince kept with me all the way through the terraced garden, then down the quaint street of steps past the bright-coloured silk-shops, to the crowded little quay. I should have thought that after my last words he would have avoided me, but apparently he hadn't understood that he was being snubbed. He even put himself out to be nice to the black dog from Airole, which is my shadow now, and detests the Prince as openly as he secretly detests it.

It was scarcely half an hour's sail to Varenna, and ten minutes after landing there, we were in the car, bowling smoothly along a charming road close by the side of Lecco, the eastern arm of the triple lake of Como.

For a time we ran opposite the promontory of Bellagio, with the white crescent of the Villa Serbelloni conspicuous on the darkly wooded hillside. Near us was an electric railway which burrowed into tunnels, as did our own road now and then, to save itself from extinction in a wall of rock. As we went on, we found the scenery of Lecco more wild and rugged than that of Como with its many villas, each one of which might have been Claude Melnotte's. Villages were sparsely scattered on the sides of high, sheer mountains which reared their bared shoulders up to a sky of pure ultramarine, but Lecco itself was big and not picturesque, taking an air of up-to-date importance from the railway station which connects this magic land with the rest of Italy.

"I shouldn't care to stop in this town," said Beechy, when Mr. Barrymore slowed down before an imposing glass-fronted hotel with gorgeous ornamentations of iron and a wonderful gateway. "After what we've come from, Lecco does look unromantic and prosaic, though I daresay this hotel is nice and will give us a good lunch."

"Nevertheless it's the Promessi Sposi country," answered Mr. Barrymore.

"What's that?" asked Beechy and Aunt Kathryn together. But I knew; for in the garret at home there's an old, old copy of "The Betrothed," which is Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi in English, and I found and read it when I was a small girl. It was very long, and perhaps I should find it a little dull now though I hope not, for I loved it then, reading in delicious secrecy and stealth, because the Sisterhood doesn't allow youthful pupils to batten on love stories, no matter how old-fashioned. I hadn't thought of the book for years; but evidently its story had been lying all this time carefully put away in a parcel, gathering dust on some forgotten shelf in my brain, for down it tumbled at the mention of the name. As Mr. Barrymore explained to Aunt Kathryn that this was the country of I Promessi Sposi because the scenes of Manzoni's romance had been laid in the neighbourhood, I could see as plainly as if they lay before my eyes the quaint woodcuts representing the beautiful heroine, Lucia, her lover, Renzo, and the wicked Prince Innominato.

Nevertheless I took some credit to myself for remembering the old book so well, and fancied that there weren't many other travellers nowadays who would have it. But pride usually goes before a fall, as hard-hearted nurses tell vain little girls who have come to grief in their prettiest dresses; and at lunch it appeared that the humblest, most youthful waiter at Lecco knew more about the classic romance of the country than I did. Indeed, not a character in the book that wasn't well represented in a picture on the wall or a painted post-card, and all seemed at least as real to the people of Lecco as any of their modern fellow-citizens.

The landlord was so shocked at the idea of our going on without driving a few kilometres to Acquate, the village where Renzo and Lucia had lived, and visiting the wayside shrine where Don Roderigo accosted Lucia, that Aunt Kathryn was fired with a desire to go, though the Prince (who had come the same way we had) would have dissuaded her by saying there was nothing worth seeing. "I believe you don't approve of stories about wicked Princes like Innominato," said Beechy, "and that's why you don't want us to go. You're afraid we'll get suspicious if we know too much about them." After that speech the Prince didn't object any more, and even went with us in his car, when we had rounded off our lunch with the Robiolo cheese of the country.

It was a short drive to Lucia's village; we could have walked in less than an hour, but that wouldn't have pleased Aunt Kathryn. Appropriately, we passed a statue of Manzoni on the way—a delightful Manzoni seated comfortably on a monument (with sculptured medallions from scenes in his books) almost within sight of the road to Acquate, and quite within sight of Monte Resegno, where the castle of wicked Innominato still stands. Then no sooner had we turned into the narrow road leading up to the little mountain hamlet than our intentions became the property of every passer-by, every peasant, every worker from the wire factories.

"I Promessi Sposi," they would say to each other in a matter-of-course way, with an accompanying nod that settled our destination without a loophole of doubt.

In Acquate itself, a tiny but picturesque old village (draped with wistaria from end to end, as if it were en fête), everything was reminiscent and commemorative of the romance that had made its fame. Here was Via Cristoforo; there Via Renzo; while naturally Via Lucia led us up to the ancient grey osteria where the virtuous heroine was born and lived. We went in, of course, and Sir Ralph ordered red wine of the country, to give us an excuse to sit and stare at the coloured lithographs and statuettes of the lovers, and to peep into the really beautiful old kitchen with the ruddy gleams of copper in its dusky shadows, its bright bits of painted china, its pretty window and huge fireplace.

On a shelf close by the fire sat a cat, and I attempted to stroke it, for it looked old enough and important enough to have belonged to Lucia herself. But I might have known that it would not suffer my caresses, for it's nearly always so with foreign cats and dogs, I find. The lack of confidence in their own attractions which they show is as pathetic as that of a neglected wife; they never seem to think of themselves as pets.

Aunt Kathryn would persist in talking of Innominato as "Abominato" (which was after all more appropriate), and the generous display of Lucia's charms in the pictures caused her basely to doubt that most virtuous maiden's genuine merit. "If the girl hadn't worn such dresses, they wouldn't have painted her in them," she argued. "If she did wear them, she was a minx who got no more than she might have expected, prancing about lonely mountain roads in such shameless things. And I don't want a piece of wood from the shutter of her bedroom to take away with me. I should be mortified to tell any ladies in Denver what it was; and what's the good of carting souvenirs of your travels around with you, if you can't tell people about them?"

We got back to our lakeside hotel sooner than we had thought, and the landlord prayed us to see one more of Lecco's great sights. "It is not as if I asked you to go out of your way to look at some fine old ruin or a beautiful view," he pleaded. "You have seen many such on your journey, and you will see many more; but this thing to which I would send you is unique. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world; and to go will take you five minutes."

This excited Aunt Kathryn's curiosity, but when she heard that "it" was only a wonderful model of the cathedral at Milan, exact in every smallest detail and made by one man, she thought that she would seize the opportunity of lying down while the others went, and be fresh for our start, in an hour's time.

The idea of a model in wood of such a masterpiece as the Milan Cathedral didn't particularly recommend itself to me; but when we had arrived at a curiosity shop, and been ushered into a huge inner room, I suddenly changed my mind, for what I saw there was wonderful—as wonderful in its way as the great Cathedral itself.

It was the father of the man who showed us the model, and owned the shop, who had made the miniature duomo. His name was Giacomo Mattarelli, and he was an extraordinary genius, worthy of a tomb in the Cathedral to the worship of whose beauty he devoted twenty years of his life and sacrificed those which remained.

The story of his self-appointed task struck me as being as marvellous as the task's result, which stood there in the dim room, perfect in proportion and delicately wrought as ivory carved by Chinese experts. I don't know what the others thought, but the tale as told by the artist's son was for me full of pathos and beautiful sentiment.

The man had been a cabinet-maker by trade, but he had money and could gratify his craving for art. The glory of the Milan Cathedral, seen once, became an obsession for him, and he went again and again. At last the idea grew in his mind to express his homage in a perfect copy of the great church which, as he said, "held his heart." There was no train between Milan and Lecco in his day (1840), and he used to walk all those miles to make drawings of the Cathedral. At first he meant to do the work in iron, but iron was too heavy; then he began casting plates in copper, but they were hollow behind, and he could not get the effect he wanted, so after several wasted months he began again with olive wood. Often he would work all night; and no trouble was too much for his inexhaustible patience. Each statue, each gargoyle was copied, first in a drawing, then with the carving tools, and no hand but that of the artist ever touched the work. At the end of twenty-two years it was completed; not a detail missing inside or out; and then when all was done the modeller went blind.

Now his son had lighted up the model for us to see, and I was almost aghast at the thought of the incredible labour it had meant—literally a labour of love, for the artist had given his eyes and his best years to his adoration of the beautiful. And the whole thing seemed the more of a marvel when I remembered how Mr. Barrymore had called Milan Cathedral the most highly ornamented building in the world. Nowhere else, he said, existed a church so smothered with carving. Every point, every niche has its statue. There, in the model, one could find each one. Through magnifying glasses the little carved faces (hardly larger, some of them, than a pin's head) looked at one with the same expression as the original, and not a mistake had been made in a fold of drapery. Each sculptured capital, each column, each decorative altar of the interior had been carved with loving fidelity. All that, in the vast Cathedral had taken centuries and many generations of men to plan and finish, this one infinitely patient man had copied in miniature in twenty-two years. It would have been worth visiting the town to see the model alone, even if we had turned miles out of our path.

To go from there to Desenzano by way of Bergamo and Brescia was to go from lake to lake—Lecco to Garda; and the road was beautiful. Castles and ancient monasteries had throned themselves on hills to look down on little villages cringing at their august feet. Along the horizon stretched a serrated line of pure white mountains, sharply chiselled in marble, while a thick carpet of wild flowers, blue and gold, had been cut apart to let our road pass through. It was a biscuit-coloured road, smooth as uncut velvet, and fringed on either side with a white spray of heavenly-fragrant acacia, like our locust-trees at home. Rustic fences and low hedges defining rich green meadows, were inter-laced with wild roses, pink and white, and plaited with pale gold honeysuckle, a magnet for armies of flitting butterflies. Every big farmhouse, every tiny cottage was curtained with wistaria and heavy-headed roses. Wagons passed us laden with new-mown hay and crimson sorrel; and we had one odd adventure, which might have been dangerous, but was only poetic.

A horse drawing some kind of vehicle, piled high with fragrant clover, took it into his head just as were side by side, that it was his duty to punish his mechanical rival for existing. Calculating his distance nicely, he gave a bound, flung the cart against our car, and upset half his load of clover on our heads. What he did afterwards we had no means of knowing, for we were temporarily extinguished.

It was the strangest sensation I ever had, being suddenly overwhelmed by a soft, yet heavy wave of something that was like a ton of perfumed feathers.

Instantly the car stopped, for Mr. Barrymore, buried as he was, didn't forget to put on the brakes. Then I felt that he was excavating me, and almost before I knew what had swallowed me up I was emerging from green and pink billows of clover, laughing, gasping, half-dazed, but wholly delighted. "You're not drowned?" he asked quickly.

"No, I can swim," I answered, and set myself promptly to help him and Sir Ralph rescue Beechy and Aunt Kathryn, which was rather like looking for needles in a haystack.

By the time we had all got our breath and wiped the clover out of our eyes, horse and cart had vanished comet-like into the horizon, leaving a green trail behind. We bailed out the car and started gaily on once more, but presently our speed slackened. Without a sigh the automobile stopped precisely in the middle of the road, and gently, though firmly, refused to go on again.

When Mr. Barrymore saw that this was more than a passing whim, he called Sir Ralph to the rescue, Beechy and I jumped out, and the car was pushed to one side. Then, with all of us standing round, he proceeded to search for the mischief. Apparently nothing was wrong. The engine was cool; the pump generously inclined, and fat yellow fireflies flew out of the sparking-plugs when they were tested. Then Mr. Barrymore remembered the cause of the Prince's first accident, and looked at the carburetter; but there was not so much as a speck of dust. For a while he continued to poke, and prod, and hammer, Sir Ralph offering humorous advice, and pretending to be sure that, if his housekeeper Félicité were on the spot, the car would start for her in an instant. The mystery only thickened, however, and to make matters worse the Prince, who had been proudly spinning on ahead, came tearing back to see what had happened. Though he pretended to be sympathetic, he was visibly overjoyed at our misfortune, which turned the tables upon us for once, and his suggestions were enough to wreck the valvular system of a motor-car; not to mention the nervous system of a distracted chauffeur.

"Perhaps the petrol's dead," said Mr. Barrymore, paying no heed to the Prince's ideas. He opened a new tin and was about to empty its contents into the reservoir, when he uttered an exclamation. "By Jove! Just look at that, Miss Destrey!" he said; and I couldn't help feeling flattered that he should appeal to me on a subject I didn't know anything about.

He was peering at the small round air-hole leading down to the reservoir, so I peered too, and in spite of my ignorance I saw what he meant. The hole was entirely stopped up with the body of a pinkish-grey caterpillar, and Mr. Barrymore explained that the poor car had simply stopped because it couldn't breathe. No air had been able to reach the petrol in the reservoir, and therefore no spirit had trickled through to the carburetter.

We had been delayed for more than half an hour by a mere worm, which had probably arrived with the clover; but when the automobile could fill her lungs again she started on at a great pace. We passed a wonderful old riverside town, that had one of the most remarkable churches we had seen yet; and by-and-by a fine city, set like a tiara on the forehead of a distant hill, seemed to spring up, peer at us from its eminence, and then dip down out of sight among other hills which made a dark foreground against white mountains.

It was Bergamo; and not once did we see it again until we were almost in the place, when it deigned to show itself once more—an old, old city on a height, a newer city extended at its feet in a plain.

"This town is packed full of interesting things," said Mr. Barrymore. "I stayed here two days once, at a nice old-fashioned hotel with domed, painted ceilings, marble walls and mahogany mantle-pieces which would have delighted you. And even then I hadn't half time for the two or three really fine churches, and the Academy, where there are some Bellinis, a Palma Vecchio, and a lot of splendid Old Masters. Bergamo claims Tasso, perhaps you remember, because his father was born here; and Harlequin, you know, was supposed to be a Bergamese."

"Oughtn't we to stop and see the pictures?" I asked.

"We ought. But one never does stop where one ought to, motoring. Besides, you'll see the best work of the same artists at Venice and as we want to reach Desenzano for dinner we had better push on."

We did push on but not far. Unless the main road runs straight into a town and out of it again it is often difficult to discover the exit from Italian cities like those through which we passed, and Mr. Barrymore seemed always reluctant to inquire. When I remarked on this once, thinking it simpler to ask a question of some one in the street rather than take a false turn, he answered that automobilists never asked the way; they found it. "I can't explain," he went on, "but I believe other men who drive cars share the same peculiarity with me; I never ask help from a passer-by if I can possibly fish out the way for myself. It isn't rational of course. Sometimes I could save a détour if I would stop and ask; but I prefer to plunge on and make a mistake rather than admit that a mere man on legs can teach me anything I don't know. It seems somehow to degrade the automobile."

The argument was too subtle for me, not being an automobilist; and on trying to get out of Bergamo, Mr. Barrymore made one of his little détours. The road twisted; and instead of finding the one towards Brescia it happened that we went down a broad way which looked like a high road, but happened to be only a cul de sac leading to the railway station. We were annoyed for a minute, but we were to rejoice in the next.

Seeing his error, Mr. Barrymore had just turned the car and was circling round, when two men stepped into the middle of the road and held up their hands. They appeared so suddenly that they made me start. They were very tall and very grave, dressed alike, in long black coats buttoned to their chins, black gloves, and high black hats. Each carried an oaken staff.

"They're mutes," said Sir Ralph as Mr. Barrymore put on the brake. "They've come to warn us that there's going to be a funeral, and we must clear out for the procession."

The pair looked so sepulchral, I thought he must be right, though I'd never seen any "funeral mutes." But Mr. Barrymore answered in a low voice, "No, they're policemen. I wonder what's up?" Then, aloud, he addressed the melancholy black beanpoles; but to my surprise, instead of using his fluent Italian to lubricate the strained situation, he spoke in English.

"Good day. Do you want something with me?"

Of course they didn't understand. How could they have been expected to? But they did not look astonished. Their black coats were too tight round their necks for them to change expression easily. One began to explain his object or intention, with gentle patience, in soft Italian—so soft that I could have burst out laughing at the thought of the contrast between him and a New York policeman.

Now almost my whole knowledge of Italian has been gained since Aunt Kathryn decided to take this trip, for then I immediately bought a phrase-book, a grammar, and "Doctor Antonio" translated into the native tongue of hero and author, all of which I've diligently studied every evening. Mr. Barrymore, on the contrary, speaks perfectly. I believe he could even think in Italian if he liked; nevertheless I could understand a great deal that the thin giant said, while he apparently was hopelessly puzzled.

Even without an accompaniment of words, the policeman's pantomime was so expressive, I fancy I should have guessed his meaning. With the grieved dignity of a father taking to task an erring child, he taxed us with having damaged a cart and injured a horse, causing it to run away. He pointed to the distance. With an arching gesture he illustrated a mound of hay (or clover?) rising from the vehicle; with a quick outward thrust of hands and widespread fingers he pictured the alarm and frantic rush of the horse; he showed us the creature running, then falling, then limping as if hurt; he touched his knees to indicate the place of the wound. What could the most elementary intelligence need more to comprehend? Certainly it was enough for the crowd collected about us; but it was not enough for Mr. Barrymore, who is an Irishman, and cleverer about everything than any man I ever met. He sat still, with an absolutely vacant though conscientious look on his face, as if he were trying hard to snatch at an idea, but hadn't succeeded. When the policeman finished, Mr. Barrymore sadly shook his head. "I wonder what you mean?" he murmured mildly in English.

The Italian retold the story, his companion throwing a word into a pause now and then. Both patient men articulated with such careful nicety that the syllables fell from their mouths like clear-cut crystals. But Mr. Barrymore shook his head again; then, suddenly, with a joyous smile he seized a pocket-book from inside his coat. From this he tore out an important-looking document stamped with a red seal, and pointed from it to a lithographed signature at the foot.

"Foreign Secretary; Lansdowne—Lord Lansdowne," he repeated. "Inglese. Inglese and Italiani sempre amici. Yes?" His smile embraced not only the long-suffering policemen but the crowd, who nodded their heads and laughed. Having made this effect, Mr. Barrymore whipped out another impressive paper, which I could see was his permis de Conduire from the Department of Mines in Nice.

He pointed to the official stamp on this document, and with the childlike pride of one who stammers a few words of a foreign tongue, he exclaimed, "Nizza. Nizza la bella." With this, he looked the giants so full and kindly in the face, and seemed to be so greatly enjoying himself, that every one laughed again, and two young men cheered, appearing to be rather ashamed of themselves afterwards. Then, as if every requirement must at last be satisfied, he made as if to go on. But the conscientious comrades, though evidently faint and discouraged, hadn't yet given up hope or played their last card, despite the yards of English red tape with which those two stamped papers had fed their appetite for officialism.

The taller of the pair laid his black glove on our mud-guard, cracked by the flapping tyre days ago, and to be mended (I'd heard Mr. Barrymore say) at the garage in Mestre. With such dramatic gestures as only the Latin races command, he attempted to prove that the mud-guard must have been broken in the collision near Bergamo, of which his mind was full

At last our Chauffeulier comprehended something. He jumped out of the throbbing car, and in his turn went through a pantomime. From a drawer under the seat he produced the rubber skin that had come off our tyre, showed how it fitted on, how it had become detached, and how it had lashed the mud-guard as we moved. Everybody, including the policemen, displayed the liveliest interest in this performance. The instant it was over, Mr. Barrymore took his place again, coiled up the rubber snake, and this time without asking leave, but with a low bow to the representatives of local law, drove the car smartly back into the town. What could the thwarted giants do after such an experience but stand looking after us and make the best of things?

"It was our salvation that we'd lost our way and were driving towards Bergamo instead of out," said the conqueror triumphantly. "You see, they thought probably they'd got hold of the wrong car, as the accused one had been coming from Lecco. What with that impression, and their despair at my idiocy, they were ready to give us the benefit of the doubt and save their faces. Otherwise, though we were innocent and the driver of the cart merely 'trying it on,' we might have been hung up here for ten days."

"Oh, could they have hung us?" gasped Aunt Kathryn. "What a dreadful thing Italian law must be."

Then we all laughed so much that she was vexed, and when Beechy called her a "stupid little Mamma," snapped back that anyhow she wasn't stupid enough to forget her Italian—if she knew any—just when it was needed.

She is too sweet-tempered to be cross for long, however, and the way towards Brescia was so charming that she forgot her annoyance. Though the surface was not so good as it had been, it was not too bad; and our noble tyres, which had borne so much, seemed to spurn the slight irregularities. With every twenty yards we had a new view, as if the landscape slowly turned, to assume different patterns like the pieces in a kaleidoscope. On our left the mountains appeared to march on with us always, white and majestic, with strange, violet shadows floating mysteriously.

Set back from the roadside, behind rich meadows rippling with gold and silver grain, were huge farmhouses, with an air of dignity born of self-respect and venerable age. We had pretty garden glimpses, too, and once in a while passed a fine mansion, good enough to call itself a château so long as there were no real ones in the neighbourhood. Often chestnut-trees in full glory of white blossom, as if blazing with fairy candles, lined our way for miles. There was snow of hawthorne too—"May," our two men called it—and ranks of little feathery white trees, such as I knew no name for, looking like a procession of brides, or young girls going to their first communion. Then, to brighten the white land with colour, there were clumps of lilac, clouds of rose-pink apple blossoms, blue streaks that meant beds of violets, and a yellow fire of iris rising straight and bright as flame along the edges of green, roadside streams.

Just as we came into a splendid old Italian town, thunder began to growl like a lion hiding in the mountains. A few drops of rain splashed on our motor-hoods, and a sudden chill wind gathered up the sweet country scents into one bouquet to fling at us.

"Here we are at Brescia. Shall we stop for the storm and have tea?" asked Mr. Barrymore.

Aunt Kathryn said "yes" at once, for she doesn't like getting wet, and can't bear to have the rain spray on her face, though I love it. So we drove quickly through streets, each one of which made a picture with its old brown palaces, its stone steps with pretty women chatting in groups under red umbrellas, its quaint bridge flung across the river, or its pergola of vines. Past a magnificent cathedral we went as the bells rang for vespers, and children, young girls, old black-shawled women, smart soldiers, and gallant-looking, tall officers answered their call. Thus we arrived at a quaint hotel, with a garden on the river's edge; and under a thick arbour of chestnut-trees (impervious to floods) we drank coffee and ate heart-shaped cakes, while the thunder played wild music for us on a vast cathedral organ in the sky.

"No wonder the soldiers are smart and the officers fine," said the Chauffeulier, in answer to a remark of mine which Beechy echoed. "Brescia deserves them more than most towns of Italy, for you know she has always been famous for the military genius and courage of her men, and once she was second only to Milan in importance. Venice—whose vassal she was—had a right to be proud of her. The history of the great siege, wherein Bayard got the wound which he thought would be mortal, is as interesting as a novel. 'The Escape of Tartaglia' and 'The Generosity of Bayard' are bits that make you want to shout aloud."

"And yet we'll pass on, and see nothing, except those panorama-like glimpses," I sighed. "Oh motoring, motoring, and motor maniacs!"

"How often one has that half-pleasant, half-regretful feeling about things or people one flashes by on the road," soliloquized Sir Ralph, pleasantly resigned to the pain of parting. I have it continually, especially about some of the beautiful, dark-eyed girls I see, and leave behind before I've fairly catalogued their features. I say to myself, "Lovely flower of beauty, wasted in the dust of the roadside. Alas! I leave you for ever. What is to be your fate? Will you grow old soon, under your peasant-burdens and cares? How sad it is that I shall never know your history."

"It wouldn't be a bit interesting," said Beechy. "But I suppose that theory won't comfort you any more than it did Maida the other day, when she tried too late to save a fly from dying in some honey, and I consoled her by saying it probably wasn't at all a nice fly, if one had known it."

"No, it doesn't console me," Sir Ralph complained. "Still, there's a certain thrill in the thought of bursting like a thunderbolt into the midst of other people's tragedies, comedies, or romances, just catching a fleeting glimpse of their possibilities and tearing on again. But there are some creatures we meet that I'm glad to lose sight of. Not those who glare anarchically, unconsciously betraying their outlook on life; not the poor slow old people who blunder in the way, and stare vacantly up at our fiery chariot—so strange a development of the world for them; not the dogs that yelp, and are furious if we don't realize that they're frightening us. No, but the horrid little jeering boys, who run beside the car at their best speed when we're forging up perpendicular hills on our lowest. These are the creatures I would wipe out of existence with one fierce wish, if I had it in me. To think that they—they—should have the power to humiliate us. I don't get back my self-respect till we're on a level, or my joie de vivre until we're shooting downhill, and can hold our own with a forty horse-power motor, to say nothing of a one-horse, Italian village boy."

"What a revelation of vindictiveness, where one would least expect it!" exclaimed Mr. Barrymore. "But the rain's over. Shall we go on?" And we all agreed eagerly, as we probably should in Paradise, if it were a question of motoring.

XVIII

Horses were better trained in this district, and "knew a motor when they saw it." Even a drove of sheep (near the wonderful fortress of Peschiera with its coiled python of a river) seemed comparatively indifferent as they surged round us in a foaming wave of wool. But then, sheep have no facial expression. All other four-footed things show emotion by a change of countenance, just as human beings do—more, because they don't conceal their feelings—but sheep look as if they wore foolishly smiling masks. Even when, as their ranks closed in around the automobile, we broke a chain with a pretty little tinkling noise, and some of the sheep tripped up on it, they did nothing but smile and merely mention "ba-a" in an indifferent, absent-minded way.

"If you only knew how much nicer you are with mint sauce!" Beechy taunted them, as we swept round a corner and were in the labyrinth of the fortress, which was, our men told us, part of the once famous quadrilateral that made trouble for Italy in '48.

"There's something pathetic about old, obsolete forts as grand as Peschiera," Mr. Barrymore said to me. "So much thought and money spent, the best military science of the day employed to make a stronghold as feeble against modern arms as a fort of cards. Such a fortress seems like an aged warrior, past his fighting days, or an old hunting dog, as keen on the chase as ever, poor fellow, but too old to move from before the fire, where he can only lie and dream of past triumphs."

"I was thinking almost exactly the same!" I exclaimed, and I liked Mr. Barrymore all the better; for it draws you nearer to a person when you find that your thoughts resemble each other in shape and colour. Oddly enough, it's often so with Mr. Barrymore and me; which is the reason it's so agreeable to have the place beside him when he drives.

No more than half a dozen miles from Peschiera we saw the Tower of San Martino, raised on the great battlefield of Solferino. By this time we had left the lake behind; but we had exchanged the low, amethyst mountains for tall white ones, glorious pinnacles of snow which were the higher Austrian Alps. Everything was impressive on this road to Verona, even the farmhouses, of an entirely different character from those of the "yesterday country;" and then, at last, we came in sight of Verona herself, lying low within a charmed circle of protecting hills, on which castles and white villas looked down from among cypresses and rose-pink almond trees.

I was glad that the gateway by which we entered Verona was the finest through which we had passed, for though Mr. Barrymore called the town "an inn for the great travellers of history," it was more for me. It was the home of romance; for was it not Juliet's home and Romeo's?

That gateway, and the splendid old crenellated bridge of dark red brick (toning deliciously with the clear, beryl-green of the swift-rushing Adda) made a noble, preface for the city. And then, each old, old street into which we turned was a new joy. What lessons for modern architects in those time-softened brick façades, with the moulded arches of terra-cotta framing the green open-work of the shutters!

I began to feel a sense of exaltation, as if I had listened to an anthem played by a master hand on a cathedral organ. I couldn't have told any one, but I happened to glance at Mr. Barrymore, and he at me, just as he had driven into the piazza where Dante's house looks down over the tombs of the Scaligers. Then he smiled, and said, "Yes, I know. I always feel like that, too, when I come here—but even more in Venice."

"How am I feeling?" I asked, smiling with him.

"Oh, a little bit as if your soul had got out of your body and taken a bath in a mountain spring, after you'd been staggering up some of the steep paths of life in the dust and sun. Isn't that it?"

"Yes. Thank you," I answered. And we seemed to understand each other so well that I was almost frightened.

"I want all these streets for mine," said Beechy, in a chattering mood. "Oh, and especially the market-place, with that strange old fountain, and the booths under the red umbrellas like scarlet mushrooms. Mamma, have you got money enough to buy them for me, and have them packed up in a big box with dried moss, like the toy villages, and expressed to Denver?"

"Speaking of dried moss, all these lovely old churches and palaces and monuments look as if history had covered them with a kind of delicate lichen," I said, more to Mr. Barrymore than to Beechy. "And it enhances their beauty, as the lace of a bride's veil enhances the beauty of her face."

"Or a nun's veil," cut in Beechy. I wonder why she says things like that so often lately? Well, perhaps it's best that I should be reminded of my vocation, but it gives me a cold, desolate feeling for a minute, and seems to throw a constraint upon us all.

We had made the Chauffeulier stop three or four times in every street to look at some beautiful bit; a gate of flexible iron-work that even Ruskin must have admired, the doorway of a church, the wonderful windows of a faded palace; but suddenly I felt ready to go to the hotel, where we were to stop for the night, that we might do our sight-seeing slowly.

It was a delightful hotel, itself once a palace, and to be there was to be "in the picture," in such a place as Verona. The Prince had arrived before us, as his motor is retrieving its reputation, and we all lunched together, making plans for the afternoon.

As usual, he was blasé—so different from Mr. Barrymore, who has seen the best things in Italy as often as Prince Dalmar-Kalm has, yet never tires; indeed, finds something new each time.

The Prince began by announcing that Verona bored him. But one could always go to sleep.

"That's what I mean to do," said Aunt Kathryn, who generally takes her cue from him. "I consider that I've seen Verona now, and I shall lie down this afternoon. Perhaps later I shall write a few letters in the hall."

I was unkind enough to fancy this a hint for the Prince, but perhaps I wronged her. And anyway, why should she not give him hints if she likes? He has been very attentive to her, although for the last few days I don't think they have been quite so much in "each others' pockets" (as Beechy calls it) as before.

A little attention was needed by the automobile, it appeared—such as a tightening up of chains, and a couple of lost grease-cups to replace; therefore Mr. Barrymore's time would be filled up without any sight-seeing. But Sir Ralph offered to take Beechy and me anywhere we liked to go. I was very glad that the Prince said nothing about accompanying us, for somehow I'd been afraid he would.

We consulted guide-books until we were bewildered, but in the midst of confusion I held fast to two things. We had seen Romeo's house, towering picturesquely behind the Scaligers' tombs; but I wanted to see where Juliet had lived, and where she had been buried.

"The Prince says it's all nonsense," exclaimed Aunt Kathryn. "If there was a slight foundation for the story in a great family scandal here about Shakspere's time, anyhow there's none for the houses or the tomb—"

Beechy stopped her ears. "You're real mean," she said, "you and the Prince both. It's just as bad as when you thought it your duty to tell me there was no Santa Claus. But I don't care; there is. I shall believe it when I'm seventeen; and I believe in the Romeo and Juliet houses too."

But when we were in the street of Juliet's house—she and Sir Ralph and I—Beechy pouted. Standing with her hands behind her, her long braids of hair dangling half-way down her short skirt as she threw back her head to gaze up, she looked incredibly modern and American. "There were no tourists' agencies in those days," she remarked, regretfully, "so I suppose Shakspere had to trust to hearsay, and somebody must have told him a big tarradiddle. I guess Juliet was really on a visit to an aunt in the country when she first met Romeo, for fancy a girl in her senses yelling down from that balcony up at the top of a tall house to any lover, let alone a secret one? Besides, there wouldn't have been enough rope in Verona to make the ladder for Romeo to climb up."

After this speech, I decided that, fond as I really am of her, I could not visit Juliet's tomb in Beechy's society. I gave no hint of my intentions, but after an exquisite hour (which nobody could spoil) in that most adorable of churches, San Zenone, and another in Sant' Anastasia, I slipped away while Beechy and Sir Ralph were picking out the details of St. Peter's life on the panels of a marvellous pilaster.

We had had a cab by the hour; and when they should discover my absence, they would take it for granted that I had got tired and gone home. They would then proceed to carry out their programme of sight-seeing very happily without me, for Beechy amuses Sir Ralph immensely, child as she is, and she makes no secret of taking pleasure in his society. She teases him, and he likes it; he draws her out, and her wit brightens in the process.

I hurried off when their backs were turned. Not far away I found a prowling cab, and told the man to drive me to Juliet's tomb. He stared, as if in surprise, for I suppose girls of our class don't go about much alone in Italian towns; but he condescended to accept me as a fare. However, to show his disapproval maybe, he rattled me through streets old and beautiful, ugly and modern (why should most modern things be ugly, even in Italy?) at a tremendous pace. At last he stopped before a high, blank wall, in a most dismal region, apparently the outskirts of the town. I would hardly believe that he had brought me to the right place, but he reassured me. In the distance another cab was approaching, probably on the same errand. I rang a bell, and a gate was opened by a nice-looking woman, who knew well what I wanted without my telling, and she spoke so clearly that I was able to understand much of what she said. Instead of feeling that the romance of visiting Juliet's burial-place was destroyed by traversing the great open square of the communal stables, where an annual horse show is held, I was conscious of a strange charm in the unsuitable surroundings. It was like coming upon a beautiful white pearl in a battered old oyster-shell, to pass through this narrow gateway at the far end of a dusty square, and find myself face to face with a glimmering tomb in a quiet cloister.

The strong contrast between the sordid exterior and this dainty, hidden interior was nothing less than dramatic. The lights and shadows played softly at hide-and-seek, like dumb children, over the grass, among the pillars of the little cloister, over the tomb itself. I was thankful to be alone, troubled by no fellow-tourists, safe from little Beechy's too comical fancies, free to be as sentimental as I liked. And I liked to be very sentimental indeed.

I stood by the tomb, feeling almost like a mourner, when a voice made me start. "Is it Juliet's spirit?" asked Prince Dalmar-Kalm.

I would rather it had been any one else. "How odd that you should come here!" I exclaimed, while my face must have shown that the surprise was not too pleasant.

"It is not at all odd. You are here," answered the Prince. "You said at déjeuner that you were coming, if you had to come alone. Eh bien? I saw Miss Beechy and Sir Ralph Moray driving together, deep in Baedeker. My heart told me where you were; and I arrive to find you looking like Juliet come to life again. Perhaps it is so indeed. Perhaps you were Juliet in another incarnation. Yes, I feel sure you were. And I was Romeo."

"I'm sure you were not," I replied; but I could not help laughing at his stagey manner, though I was more annoyed than ever now, and annoyed with myself too. "I particularly wished to be alone here, or I wouldn't have slipped away from Beechy and Sir Ralph, so—"

"And I particularly wished to be alone here with you, or I wouldn't have followed when you had slipped away from them," he broke in. "Oh, Miss Destrey—my Madeleine, you must listen to me. There could be no place in the world more appropriate to the tale of a man's love for a woman than this, where a man and woman died for love of one another."

"I thought you called all this 'nonsense'?" I cut him short. "No, Prince, neither here nor anywhere must you speak of love to me, for I don't love you, and never could."

"I know that you mean to shut yourself away from the world," he interrupted me again. "But you shall not. It would be sacrilege. You—the most beautiful, the most womanly girl in the world—to—"

"No more, please!" I cried. "It doesn't matter what my future is to be, for you will not be in it. I—"

"I must be in it. I adore you. I can't give you up. Haven't you seen from the first how I loved you?"

"I thought I saw you liked trying to flirt when no one was looking. That sounds rather horrid, but—it's the truth."

"You misjudged me cruelly. Have you no human ambition? I could place you among the highest in any land. With me, your beauty should shine as it never could in your own country. Is it nothing to you that I can make you a Princess?"

"Less than nothing," I answered, "though perhaps it would be pretty of me to thank you for wanting to make me one. So I do thank you; and I'll thank you still more if you will go now, and leave me to my thoughts."

"I cannot go till I have made you understand how I love you, how indispensable you are to me," he persisted. And I grew really angry; for he had no right to persecute me, when I had refused him.

"Very well, then, I shall go," I said, and would have passed him, but he seized my hand and held it fast.

It was this moment that Mr. Barrymore chose for paying his respects to Juliet's tomb; and I blushed as I have never blushed in my life, I think—blushed till the tears smarted in my eyes. I was afraid he would believe that I'd been letting Prince Dalmar-Kalm make love to me. But there was nothing to say, unless I were willing to have a scene, and that would have been hateful. Nor was there anything to do except the obvious thing, snatch my hand away; and that might seem to be only because some one had come. But how I should have loved to box the Prince's ears! I never dreamed that I had such a temper. I suppose, though, there must be something of the fishwife in every woman—something that comes boiling up to the surface once in a while, and makes noblesse oblige hard to remember.

The one relief to my feelings in this situation was given by my queer little new pet—the wisp of a black doggie I've named Airole, after the village where he grew. I'd brought him into the cloister in my arms hidden under a cape, because he had conceived a suspicious dislike of the cabman. Now he said all the things to the Prince that I wanted to say, and more, and would have snapped, if the Prince had not retired his hand in time.

The process of quieting Airole gave me the chance to make up my mind what I should do next. If I went away, I couldn't prevent Prince Dalmar-Kalm from going with me, and Mr. Barrymore would have a right to imagine that I wished to continue the interrupted scene. If I stayed it was open for him to fancy that I wanted to be with him; but between two evils one chooses the less; besides, a nice thing about Mr. Barrymore is that, notwithstanding his good looks and cleverness, he's not conceited—not conceited enough, I sometimes think, for he lets people misunderstand his position and often seems more amused than angry at a snub.

Acting on my quick decision, I said, "Oh, I'm glad you've come. You know so much about Verona. Please talk to me of this place—only don't say it isn't authentic, for that would be a jarring note."

"I'm afraid I don't care enough whether things are authentic or not," he answered, both of us ignoring the Prince. "You know, in my country, legend and history are a good deal mixed, which makes for romance. Besides, I'm inclined to believe in stories that have been handed down from generation to generation—told by grandfathers to their grandchildren, and so on through the centuries till they've reached us. When they're investigated by the cold light of reason, at least they can seldom be disproved."

I agreed, and the conversation went on, deliberately excluding the Prince. Each minute I said to myself, "Surely he'll go." But he did not. He stayed while Mr. Barrymore and I discussed the genius of Shakspere, chiming in now and then as if nothing had happened, and remaining until we were ready to go.

At the cab there was another crisis. I hadn't yet entirely realized the Prince's stupendous capacity for what Beechy would put into one short, sharp word "Cheek." But I fully appreciated it when he calmly manifested his intention of getting into my cab, as if we had come together.

Something had to be done instantly, or it would be too late.

Leaning from my seat so that the Prince had to wait with his foot on the step, I exclaimed, "Oh! Mr. Barrymore, won't you let me give you a lift? Prince Dalmar-Kalm has his own cab, and I'm alone in this."

"Thanks very much, I shall be delighted," said the Chauffeulier.

Even the Prince's audacity wasn't equal to the situation created by these tactics. He retired, hat in hand, looking so furious that I could hardly help laughing. Mr. Barrymore got in beside me, and we drove off leaving the Prince with nobody but his own cabman to vent his rage on.

I rather hoped, for a minute, that Mr. Barrymore would say something which would give me the chance for a vague word or two of explanation; but he didn't. He simply talked of indifferent things, telling me how the work on the car was finished, and how he had had time after all to wander among his favourite bits of Verona. And then, in a flash of understanding, I saw how much more tactful and manly it was in him not to mention the Prince.