ies about her."

"Oh--have you?" asked Sant' Ilario with renewed interest.

"Yes, very odd." He paused and looked round the room to assure himself
that no one else was present. "There are two distinct stories about her.
The first is this. They say that she is a South American prima donna,
who sang only a few months, at Rio de Janeiro and then at Buenos Ayres.
An Italian who had gone out there and made a fortune married her from
the stage. In coming to Europe, he unfortunately fell overboard and she
inherited all his money. People say that she was the only person who
witnessed the accident. The man's name was Aragno. She twisted it once
and made Aranjuez of it, and she turned it again and discovered that it
spelled Aragona. That is the first story. It sounds well at all events."

"Very," said Sant' Ilario, with a laugh.

"A profoundly interesting page in genealogy, if she happens to marry
somebody," observed Montevarchi, mentally noting all the facts.

"What is the other story?" asked Frangipani.

"The other story is much less concise and detailed. According to this
version, she is the daughter of a certain royal personage and of a
Polish countess. There is always a Polish countess in those stories! She
was never married. The royal personage has had her educated in a convent
and has sent her out into the wide world with a pretty fancy name of his
own invention, plentifully supplied with money and regular documents
referring to her union with the imaginary Aranjuez, and protected by a
sort of body-guard of mutes and duennas who never appear in public. She
is of course to make a great match for herself, and has come to Rome to
do it. That is also a pretty tale."

"More interesting than the other," said Montevarchi. "These side lights
of genealogy, these stray rivulets of royal races, if I may so
poetically call them, possess an absorbing interest for the student. I
will make a note of it."

"Of course, I do not vouch for the truth of a single word in either
story," observed the young man. "Of the two the first is the less
improbable. I have met her and talked to her and she is certainly not
less than five and twenty years old. She may be more. In any case she is
too old to have been just let out of a convent."

"Perhaps she has been loose for some years," observed Sant' Ilario,
speaking of her as though she were a dangerous wild animal.

"We should have heard of her," objected the other. "She has the sort of
per