the interests of the next of
kin."

"Roma! How dare you talk like that? About your best friend, too!"

"I didn't say anything against the Baron, did I?"

"You would be an ungrateful girl if you did. As for your father, I'm
tired of talking. Only for his exile you would have had possession of
your family estates at this moment, and been a princess in your own
right."

"Only for this exile I shouldn't have been here at all, auntie, and
somebody else would have been the princess, it seems to me."

The old lady dropped the perfumed handkerchief that was at her nose and
said:

"What do you talk about downstairs all day long, miss? Pretty thing if
you allow a man like that to fill you with his fictions. He is a nice
person to take your opinions from, and you are a nice girl to stand up
for a man who sold you into slavery, as I might say! Have you forgotten
the baker's shop in London--or was it a pastry cook's, or what?--where
they made you a drudge and a scullery-maid, after your father had given
you away?"

"Don't speak so loud, Aunt Betsy."

"Then don't worry me by defending such conduct. Ah, how my head aches!
Natalina, where are my smelling salts? Natalina!"

"I'm not defending my father, but still...."

"Should think not, indeed! If it hadn't been for the Baron, who went in
search of you, and found you after you had run away and been forced to
go back to your slave-master, and then sent you to school in Paris, and
now permits you to enjoy half the revenue of your father's estates, and
forbids us to say a word about his generosity, where would you be?
Madonna mia! In the streets of London, perhaps, to which your father had
consigned you!"

The Princess Bellini was waiting for Roma when she returned to the
drawing-room. The little lady was as friendly as if nothing unusual had
occurred.

"Just going for a walk in the Corso, my dear. You'll come? No? Ah, work,
work, work!"

The little lady tapped Roma's arm with her pince-nez and laughed.

"Everybody has heard that _he_ is sitting to you, and everybody
understands. That reminds me--I've a box at the new opera to-morrow
night:--'Samson' at the Costanzi, you know. Only Gi-gi and myself, but
if you would like me to take you and to ask your own particular
Samson...."

"Honourable Rossi," said Felice at the door, and David Rossi entered the
room, with the black poodle bounding before him.

"I must apologise for not sending back the dog," he said. "It follo