inchbeck to gold," said Susanna. "A title improvised yesterday--and
a title dating from 1104! The real thing, and a tawdry imitation. Go
to Sampaolo, make her acquaintance, fall in love with her, persuade her
to fall in love with you, marry her,--and there will be the grand old
House of Valdeschi itself again."

Her eyes glowed.

But Anthony only laughed.

"You counsel procedures incompatible," he said. "If I am the custodian
of a tradition, which you would have me maintain, how better could I
play it false, than by marrying, of all women, the granddaughter, the
heiress and representative, of the man who upset it?"

"You would heal a family feud, and blot out a wrong," said she, drawing
patterns again with her sunshade. "Magnanimity should be _part_ of
your tradition. You would not visit the sins of the fathers upon the
children? You don't hold your cousin personally responsible?"

She looked up obliquely at him.

"Personally," he answered, "my cousin may be the most innocent soul
alive. She is born to a ready-made situation, and accepts it. But it
is a situation which I, if I am to be loyal to my tradition, cannot
accept. It is the negation of my tradition. I am obliged to submit to
it, but I can't accept it. My cousin is the embodiment of the
anti-tradition. You say--marry her. That is like inviting the Pope to
ally himself with the Antipope."

"No, no," contended Susanna, arresting her sunshade in the midst of an
intricate vermiculation. "For the Antipope must be in wilful personal
rebellion; while your cousin is what she is, quite independently of her
own will--perhaps in spite of it. Imagine me, for instance, in her
place--me," she smiled, "the sole legitimist in Sampaolo. What could I
do? I find myself in possession of stolen goods. I would, if I could,
restore them at once to their rightful owner. But I can't--because I
am only the tenant for life. I can't sell them, nor give them away,
nor even, dying, dispose of them by will. I am only the tenant for
life. After me, they must pass to the next heir. So, if I wish to
restore them to their rightful owner, there 's but a single means of
doing so open to me--I must induce the rightful owner to make me his
wife."

She smiled again, mirthfully, but with conviction, with conclusiveness,
as who should say, "I have proved my point."

"Ah," pronounced Anthony, with stress, though perhaps a trifle
ambiguously, "if it were you, it would be