began. She did love
somebody else, and the wicked Duke starved her to death in the tower of
another old castle. When we get to Pavia, which we shall pass on the way
to Milan, I'll show you and Miss Destrey where your namesake lived when
she was a duchess, and died when her duke would have her for a duchess
no more, but wanted somebody else. Poor Beatrice, I wonder if her spirit
has ever been present at the performance of the opera, and whether she
approved."

"I hope she came with the man she loved, and sat in a box, and that the
duke was down in--in--"

"The pit," said Mr. Barrymore, laughing, and giving a glance back over
his shoulder for Maida and Sir Ralph, as he stopped the car in front of
a machinist's place. "Here we are, Joseph," he called to the Prince's
chauffeur, who was steering the broken car. "Now, how soon do you expect
to finish your job?"

"With proper tools, it should be no more than an hour's work," said
Joseph, jumping down.

"An hour? Why, I should have thought three would be more like it,"
exclaimed Mr. Barrymore.

"I am confident that I can do it in one all little hour," reiterated
Joseph, and for once the Prince regarded him benignly.

"Whatever Joseph's faults, he is an excellent mechanician," said His
Highness. "I did not intend to ask that you would wait, but if my car
can be ready so soon, perhaps you will have pity upon me, Countess, and
let me escort you to the castle while Joseph is working."

"Castle? I don't see any castle," returned Mamma, gazing around.

"What's left of it looks more like a walking-stick than a castle," said
I, pointing up to the tall, tapering finger of broken stone that almost
touched the clouds.

"Is Mamma's new property in Dalmatia as well perserved as that,
Prince?"

"You have always a joke ready, little Miss Beechy." His lips
smiled; but his eyes boxed my ears. Almost I felt them tingle; and
suddenly I said to myself, "Good gracious, Beechy Kidder, what if your
dolls should take to playing the game their own way, in spite of you,
now you've set them going! Where would you be _then_, I'd like to know?"
And a horrid creep ran down my spine, at the thought of Prince
Dalmar-Kalm as a step-father. Maybe he would shut _me_ up in a tower and
starve me to death, as the wicked duke did with the other Beatrice; and
it wouldn't comfort me a bit if some one wrote an opera about my
sufferings. But if he thinks he'll really get Mamma, he little knows Me,
that's a