he gilded coronet topping the canopy above," just
as Susanna had described it. What were Anthony's emotions?

But the white-haired serving-man (as Adrian noticed) from time to time
allowed his eyes to fix themselves studiously upon Anthony's face, and
appeared to fall into a muse. Now he stopped before a high
white-and-gold double-door. "The entrance to the private apartments,"
he said, and placed his hand upon the fancifully-wrought ormolu
door-knob.

"Are the public admitted to the private apartments," Anthony doubted,
holding back.

"No, Signore," said the old man. "But I think, if the Signore will
pardon me, that the Signore's Excellency will be a connection of the
family."

Anthony all but jumped.

"Why on earth should you think that?" he wondered.

"It's the persistent feature," said Adrian, in English, with a chuckle.
"The Signore's Excellency is betrayed by the Signore's Excellency's
beak."

"If the Signore will pardon me, I observed that the Signore's name,
when he wrote in the visitors' book, was Crahforrdi of England," the
old man explained. "But the Crahforrdi of England are a house cognate
to ours. The consort of the Conte who was Conte when I had the honour
of entering the family, nearly sixty years ago, was a Crahforrdi of
England, a lordessa. Moreover it is in the Signore's face. If the
Signori will favour me, it will give me great pleasure to show them
what they will think is the Signore's own portrait."

In size and shape the private apartments were simply a continuation of
the state apartments, but they were furnished in modern fashion, with a
great deal of luxury, and, in so far as the enveloping brown hollands
would permit one to opine, with a great deal of taste. "The family
occupy this palace during the cold months only. In summer they make a
villegglatura to Isola Nobile. Therefore you do not see these rooms at
their best," the old man apologized. In what he described as the
_gabine'o segre'o_ of the Countess, over the fireplace, hung the
full-length, life-size portrait of a gentleman, in the dress of
eighteen-forty-something--high stock, flowered waistcoat, close-fitting
buff trousers, and full-bottomed blue frock-coat, very tight above the
hips.

"Count Antonio the Seventeenth, the last of our tyrants. The Signori
will be aware that we were tyrants of Sampaolo for many centuries,"
said the old man, not without a touch of pride. Then, bowing to
Anthony, "One would thin