with the laborious work of writing in cipher; and, knowing how valuable
a practical safeguard against suspicion is the reputation of being a
well-dressed woman, studied the fashion-plates as carefully as she did
the keys of her ciphers.

The bored and melancholy literary lions brightened up a little at the
sound of Gemma's name; she was very popular among them; and the radical
journalists, especially, gravitated at once to her end of the long room.
But she was far too practised a conspirator to let them monopolize her.
Radicals could be had any day; and now, when they came crowding round
her, she gently sent them about their business, reminding them with a
smile that they need not waste their time on converting her when there
were so many tourists in need of instruction. For her part, she devoted
herself to an English M. P. whose sympathies the republican party was
anxious to gain; and, knowing him to be a specialist on finance, she
first won his attention by asking his opinion on a technical
point concerning the Austrian currency, and then deftly turned the
conversation to the condition of the Lombardo-Venetian revenue. The
Englishman, who had expected to be bored with small-talk, looked askance
at her, evidently fearing that he had fallen into the clutches of a
blue-stocking; but finding that she was both pleasant to look at and
interesting to talk to, surrendered completely and plunged into as grave
a discussion of Italian finance as if she had been Metternich. When
Grassini brought up a Frenchman "who wishes to ask Signora Bolla
something about the history of Young Italy," the M. P. rose with
a bewildered sense that perhaps there was more ground for Italian
discontent than he had supposed.

Later in the evening Gemma slipped out on to the terrace under the
drawing-room windows to sit alone for a few moments among the great
camellias and oleanders. The close air and continually shifting crowd in
the rooms were beginning to give her a headache. At the further end of
the terrace stood a row of palms and tree-ferns, planted in large tubs
which were hidden by a bank of lilies and other flowering plants.
The whole formed a complete screen, behind which was a little nook
commanding a beautiful view out across the valley. The branches of a
pomegranate tree, clustered with late blossoms, hung beside the narrow
opening between the plants.

In this nook Gemma took refuge, hoping that no one would guess her
whereabouts unt