to realise the aspiration of a lifetime. I
'm going to find out my cousin, and make his acquaintance, and see what
he 's like. And then--well, if he 's nice, who knows what may happen?
I planned it ever so long ago," she proclaimed, with an ingenuousness
that was almost brazen, "and made all my preparations. Then I sat down
and waited for the day when I should be free and independent."

Her eyes melted again, deprecating his censure, beseeching his
indulgence, yet still, with a little glint of raillery, defying him to
do his worst.

His hand sawed the air, his foot tapped the ground.

"Free and independent, free and independent," he fumed, in derision.
"Fine words, fine words. And you made all your preparations
beforehand, in secrecy; and you 're not sly? Misericordia di Dio!"

He groaned impotently; he shook his bony old fist at the stars in the
firmament.

"Perhaps you will admit," he questioned loftily, "that there are
decencies to be observed even by the free and independent? It is not
decent for you to travel alone. If you mean a single word of what you
say, why are n't you accompanied by the Baronessa?"

"The Baronessa fatigues me," Susanna answered gently. "And I
exasperate her and try her patience cruelly. She 's always putting
spokes in my wheel, and I 'm always saying and doing things she
disapproves of. Ah, if she only suspected the half of the things I
don't say or do, but think and feel!"

She nodded with profound significance.

"We belong," she pointed out, "to discrepant generations. I 'm so
intensely modern, and she 's so irredeemably eighteen-sixty. I 've
only waited for this blessed day of liberty to cut adrift from the
Baronessa. And the pleasure will be mutual, I promise you. She will
enjoy a peace and a calm that she has n't known for ages. Ouf! I feel
like Europe after the downfall of Napoleon."

She gave her shoulders a little shake of satisfaction.

"The Baronessa," she said, and I 'm afraid there was laughter in her
tone, "is a prisoner for the night on Isola Nobile." I 'm afraid she
tittered. "I gave orders that the launch was to start off the moment
she put her foot aboard it, and on no account was it to turn back, and
on no account was any boat to leave the island till to-morrow morning.
I expect she 'll be rather annoyed--and puzzled. But--cosa vuole?
It's all in the day's work."

Then her voice modulated, and became confidential and exultant.

"I 'm going