last"--her voice sank, and
she shook her head--"there comes a season when he returns no more."

They had strolled beyond the hortensias, into a shady avenue of elms.
Round the trunk of one of these ran a circular bench. Susanna sat
down. Anthony stood before her.

"I trust, at any rate," she said, whimsically smiling, "that the moral
of my little exhibition has not been lost upon you?"

"A moral? Oh?" said he. "No. I had supposed it was beauty for
beauty's sake."

"Ah, but beauty sometimes points a moral in spite of itself. The very
obvious moral of this is that where there 's a will there 's a way."

She looked up, making her eyes grave; then smiled again.

"We must resume our plotting. I think I have found the way by which
the Conte di Sampaolo can regain his inheritance."

Anthony laughed.

"There are exactly two ways by which he can do that," he said. "One is
to equip an army, and go to war with the King of Italy, and--a mere
detail--conquer him. The other is to procure a wishing-cap and wish
it. Which do you recommend?"

"No," said Susanna. "There is a third and simpler way."

She was tracing patterns on the ground with the point of her parasol.

"There is the way of marriage."

She completed a circle, and began to draw a star within it.

"You should go to Sampaolo, and marry your cousin. So"--her eyes on
her drawing, she spoke slowly, with an effect supremely impersonal--"so
you would come to your own again; and so a house divided against
itself, an ancient noble house, would be reunited; and an ancient
historic line, broken for a little, would be made whole."

She put the fifth point to her star.

Anthony stood off, half laughing, and held up his hands, in admiring
protest.

"Dear lady, what a programme!" was his laughing ejaculation.

"I admit," said she, critically regarding the figure at her feet, "that
at first blush it may seem somewhat fantastic. But it is really worth
serious consideration. You are the heir to a great name, which has
been separated from the estates that are its appanage, and to a great
tradition, which has been interrupted. But the heir to such a name, to
such a tradition, is heir also to great duties, to great obligations.
He has no right to be passive, or to think only of himself. The
thirty-fourth Count of Sampaolo owes it to his thirty-three
predecessors--the descendant of San Guido owes it to San Guido--to
bestir himself, to do the very utmost in h