were he understood them falsely, as she meant he should, and the
recording angel gave her credit for a lie.

"I am more grateful than I can express," cried Chigi, "for I have great
need of Raphael at this moment, and you, dearest Imperia, shall never
regret this kindness."

"We have played into the hands of the enemy," Imperia said to me in a
low voice as Chigi darted away to write to Raphael; "nevertheless the
game is not yet lost. I know my dear Agostino's cards, and though they
are good ones I have some which he recks not of and he shall never wed
the fair Maria."

A wonderful woman was this Imperia, as I was beginning to realise,
though I had not yet sounded the depths of that strange nature.

Chigi's letter to Raphael was a masterpiece of duplicity. He confided to
him as the most sacred secret the information that his engagement to a
certain mutual acquaintance of Cetinale days would soon be announced,
and he begged his friend, for the sake of the lady, to give his personal
and inimitable touch to the frescoes of _Cupid and Psyche_, and to other
decorations in the villa which he was preparing for his bride. Although
he also confessed the stratagem by which he had secured the presence of
Margherita, it was the news of Chigi's approaching marriage which
determined Raphael to accede to his request. Though Agostino had worded
his allusions to his betrothed so skilfully that they applied with equal
fitness to either Imperia or Maria Dovizio, Raphael never doubted that
he referred to the latter. The news simply confirmed the suspicions
which he had long entertained, and with characteristic magnanimity, he
determined to leave Maria the highest masterpiece of which his hand was
capable.

He came at once, and Imperia sat smiling at his side while he painted
Margherita as the principal figure in the glorious _Triumph of Galatea_,
Chigi, marking Margherita's look of rapt devotion, drew me aside in
ecstacy. "It is plain that they love each other," he said. "When the
picture is nearly finished I will invite Bernardo Dovizio and his niece
to see it. They will understand the relations of this artist and model.
He is cutting his own throat with every stroke of his facile brush, for
Maria Dovizio will brook no divided affection."

But when in alarm I reported this conversation to Imperia--"Children!"
she cried scornfully; "what children you men are! Can you not see,
Giovanni, that, though Margherita worships her painter as a