time after the rusty chain had
been pulled. Ugo's Sicilian orderly opened the door at last in a
leisurely way and appeared on the threshold in grey linen fatigue
dress; on seeing the car and the Princess he straightened himself and
saluted.

His master was riding, he said, and would not come home for an hour.
The Princess wrote a message on a card, asking if Ugo would come and
see her any day after five o'clock, and she wrote down the number of
her telephone. She gave the card to the man, and by way of impressing
its importance on him, added that she was a very old friend of the
family and had known the Captain's mother as well as the brother who
had been lost in Africa. She also smiled sweetly, for the Sicilian was
a handsome young man; she had a way of smiling at handsome men when
she was speaking to them, especially if she wished them to remember
what she said.

When the car was gone, Salvatore Pica, the orderly, shut the door and
went into the hall where the telephone was. He looked at the visiting
card before leaving it on the brass salver on the table, where letters
and reports were placed for the Captain whenever he was out; and being
an intelligent man and considerably impressed by what the Princess had
told him, he promptly wrote the name, address, and telephone number in
the address-book which hung by a string beside the instrument. For Ugo
never telephoned himself if he could help it, and was careless about
addresses, which it was Pica's business to copy and have at hand when
needed.

Moreover, the Princess had represented herself as being a very old
friend of the Captain's family, and Pica mentally noted the fact,
because he had often wondered that his master should apparently have
no intimate friends at all, though he was evidently respected and
liked by his brother-officers.

When Ugo came home and dismounted at the door, Pica at once told him
of the Princess's visit, repeating her message without a mistake, and
adding that he had copied her name and address in the telephone-book.
The Captain nodded gravely and looked at the card before he went
upstairs, but said nothing to his man. Being very careful and
punctilious in such matters, as I have said, he wrote a line that
evening, thanking the Princess for her kind invitation and saying that
he hoped to avail himself of it some day, but that he was very busy
just at present. This was true, in a sense, for he had just received
an important new book in t