o Italy. Nobody who was superstitious would live in the
house, and so it was not often let. Secundina did not know where the
murder had taken place, but believed it was in the dining-room, and that
the trunk had been kept in the cellar.

It was Dodo to whom the tale was told, and she repeated it to Mrs.
Collis and her daughter, the three having forgotten their slight
differences in making common, secret cause against the Dauntreys, or,
rather, against Lady Dauntrey; for they were inclined to like and be
sorry for her husband, pitying him because misfortune or weakness had
brought him to the pass of marrying such a woman. "You could make a
whole macadamized road out of her heart," remarked Mrs. Collis.

"It would serve her right if we all marched out of this loathsome den in
a body," said Dodo, emphatically, when they had met to talk things over
in the Collises' room. "She's a selfish cat and thinks of nobody but
herself. She won't even let the men come near us girls if she can help
it, though you and I both know perfectly well, Miss Collis, that she
hinted about the most wonderful chances of great marriages, nothing
lower than an earl at meanest. Not that you and I need look for
husbands. But that isn't the point; for anyhow, she has no business to
snap them out of our mouths. Now, she's jealous if Dom Ferdinand or the
Marquis de Casablanca so much as looks at one of us. And she's given us
the worst rooms, so she can take in other poor deluded creatures and get
more money out of them. And there isn't enough to eat. And all the eggs
and fish have had a past. And Secundina says there are black beetles as
large as chestnuts in the kitchen. Still----"

"Still," echoed Miss Collis, "Monseigneur's awfully interesting, and
it's fun being in the same house with him; though I'm afraid he's
selfish too, or he wouldn't calmly keep on his front room, when he can't
help knowing we're stuffed into back ones without any view. Of course he
_is_ a royalty, so perhaps he has his dignity to think of. But I know
an American man wouldn't do such a thing, not even if he were a
President."

"The Marquis is nice, too," said Mrs. Collis. "Lord Dauntrey tells me
his family's one of the oldest in the 'Almanach de Gotha,' whatever
_that_ is. And Monseigneur and he are both great friends of the
Dauntreys."

"Only of Lord Dauntrey," Dodo corrected her.

"Well, anyhow, they're likely to stay a while in this house, for
whatever there is of the