you not come to Cento Celli this morning?' asked the duke.

'I had another appointment,' Andrea replied without reflecting.

'At the Palazzo Barberini perhaps?' said the duke with a shy laugh, in
which he was joined by the others.

'Perhaps.'

'Perhaps, indeed?--why, Ludovico saw you go in.'

'And where were you, may I ask?' said Andrea turning to Barbarisi.

'Over the way, at my Aunt Saviano's.'

'Ah!'

'I don't know if you had better luck than we had,' Beffi went on, 'but
we had a run of forty-two minutes and got two foxes. The next meet is on
Thursday at the Three Fountains.'

'You understand--at the _Three_ Fountains, not at the _Four_,' Gino
Bomminaco admonished him with comic gravity.

The others burst into a roar of laughter which Andrea could not help
joining. He was by no means displeased at their gibes; on the contrary,
now that there was no truth in their suspicions, it flattered him for
his friends to think he had renewed his relations with Elena. He turned
away to speak to Giulio Musellaro, who had just come in. From a few
strays words that reached his ear, he found that the group behind him
were discussing Lord Heathfield.

'I knew him in London six or seven years ago,' Beffi was saying. 'He was
Gentleman of the Bed-chamber to the Prince of Wales as far as I
remember----'

The duke lowered his voice, he was evidently retailing the most
appalling things. Andrea caught scraps here and there of a highly-spiced
nature and, once or twice, the name of a newspaper famous in the annals
of London scandal. He longed to hear more; a terrible curiosity took
possession of him. His imagination conjured up Lord Heathfield's hands
before him--so white, so significant, so expressive, so impossible to
forget. Musellaro was still talking, and now said--

'Let us go--I want to tell you----'

On the stairs they encountered Albonico, who was coming up. He was in
deep mourning for Donna Ippolita, and Andrea stopped to ask for details
of the sad event. He had heard of her death when he was in Paris in
November from Guido Montelatici, a cousin of Donna Ippolita.

'Was it really typhus?'

The wan and pale-eyed widower grasped at an occasion for pouring out his
griefs, for he made a display of his bereavement as, at one time, he had
made a display of his wife's beauty. He stammered and grew lachrymose
and his colourless eyes seemed bulging from his head.

Seeing that the widower's elegy threatened to be somewhat