sonality which is noticed anywhere and which makes itself felt."

"Then you incline to the belief that she dropped the Signor Aragno
quietly overboard in the neighbourhood of the equator?"

"The real story may be quite different from either of those I have told
you."

"And she is a friend of poor old Donna Tullia!" exclaimed Montevarchi
regretfully. "I am sorry for that. For the sake of her history I could
almost have gone to the length of making her acquaintance."

"How the Del Ferice would rave if she could hear you call her poor old
Donna Tullia," observed Frangipani. "I remember how she danced at the
ball when I came of age!"

"That was a long time ago, Filippo," said Montevarchi thoughtfully, "a
very long time ago. We were all young once, Filippo--but Donna Tullia is
really only fit to fill a glass case in a museum of natural history
now."

The remark was not original, and had been in circulation some time. But
the three men laughed a little and Montevarchi was much pleased by their
appreciation. He and Frangipani began to talk together, and Sant' Ilario
took up his paper again. When the young diplomatist laid his own aside
and went out, Giovanni followed him, and they left the club together.

"Have you any reason to believe that there is anything irregular about
this Madame d'Aranjuez?" asked Sant' Ilario.

"No. Stories of that kind are generally inventions. She has not been
presented at Court--but that means nothing here. And there is a doubt
about her nationality--but no one has asked her directly about it."

"May I ask who told you the stories?"

The young man's face immediately lost all expression.

"Really--I have quite forgotten," he said. "People have been talking
about her."

Sant' Ilario justly concluded that his companion's informant was a lady,
and probably one in whom the diplomatist was interested. Discretion is
so rare that it can easily be traced to its causes. Giovanni left the
young man and walked away in the opposite direction, inwardly meditating
a piece of diplomacy quite foreign to his nature. He said to himself
that he would watch the man in the world and that it would be easy to
guess who the lady in question was. It would have been clear to any one
but himself that he was not likely to learn anything worth knowing, by
his present mode of procedure.

"Gouache," he said, entering the artist's studio a quarter of an hour
later, "do you know anything about Madame d'Aranjuez?"