ement was clean and well kept, a new
flagstone here and there showing that some care was bestowed upon
maintaining it in good repair; but for any decoration there was to be
found in the courts, the place might have been a fortress, as indeed it
once was. The owners, father and son, lived in their ancestral home in a
sort of solemn magnificence that savoured of feudal times. Giovanni was
the only son of five-and-twenty years of wedlock. His mother had been
older than his father, and had now been dead some time. She had been a
stern dark woman, and had lent no feminine touch of grace to the palace
while she lived in it, her melancholic temper rather rejoicing in the
sepulchral gloom that hung over the house. The Saracinesca had always
been a manly race, preferring strength to beauty, and the reality of
power to the amenities of comfort.

Giovanni walked home from the afternoon reception at the Embassy. His
temper seemed to crave the bleak wet air of the cold streets, and he did
not hurry himself. He intended to dine at home that evening, and he
anticipated some kind of disagreement with his father. The two men were
too much alike not to be congenial, but too combative by nature to care
for eternal peace. On the present occasion it was likely that there would
be a struggle, for Giovanni had made up his mind not to marry Madame
Mayer, and his father was equally determined that he should marry her at
once: both were singularly strong men, singularly tenacious of their
opinions.

At precisely seven o'clock father and son entered from different doors
the small sitting-room in which they generally met, and they had no
sooner entered than dinner was announced. Two words might suffice for the
description of old Prince Saracinesca--he was an elder edition of his
son. Sixty years of life had not bent his strong frame nor dimmed the
brilliancy of his eyes, but his hair and beard were snowy white. He was
broader in the shoulder and deeper in the chest than Giovanni, but of
the same height, and well proportioned still, with little tendency to
stoutness. He was to all appearance precisely what his son would be at
his age--keen and vigorous, the stern lines of his face grown deeper, and
his very dark eyes and complexion made more noticeable by the dazzling
whiteness of his hair and broad square beard--the same type in a
different stage of development.

The dinner was served with a certain old-fashioned magnificence which has
grown ra