act, I had
got the Marchese d'Ardini to bring me away from the ball-room to hide in
this secret arbour of his old Roman garden, because my mood was out of
tune for dancing. I hadn't wished to come to the ball, but Grandmother
had insisted. Now I had made an excuse of wanting an ice, to get rid of
my dear old friend the Marchese for a few minutes.

"She couldn't have cared about the poor chap," said the man in a hard
voice, with a slight American accent, "or she wouldn't be here
to-night."

My heart missed a beat.

"They say," explained the woman, "that her grandmother practically
forced her to marry the prince, and arranged it at a time when he'd have
to go back to the Front an hour after the wedding, so they shouldn't be
_really_ married, if anything happened to him. I don't know whether
that's true or not!"

But I knew! I knew that it was true, because they were talking about me.
In an instant--before I'd decided whether to rush out or sit still--I
knew something more.

"_You_ ought to be well informed, though," the woman's voice continued.
"You're a distant cousin, aren't you?"

"'Distant' is the word! About forty-fourth cousin, four times removed,"
the man laughed with frank bitterness. (No wonder, as he'd
unsuccessfully claimed the right to our family estate, to hitch on to
his silly old, dug-up title!) Not only did I know, now, of whom they
were talking, but I knew one of those who talked: a red-headed giant of
a man I'd seen to-night for the first time, though he had annoyed
Grandmother and me from a distance, for years. In fact, we'd left home
and taken up the Red Cross industry in Rome, because of him. Indirectly
it was his fault that I was married, since, if it hadn't been for him, I
shouldn't have come to Italy or met Prince di Miramare. I did not stop,
however, to think of all this. It just flashed through my subconscious
mind, while I asked myself, "What has happened to Paolo? Has he been
killed, or only wounded? And what do the brutes mean by a 'double
blow'?"

I had no longer the impulse to rush out. I waited, with hushed breath. I
didn't care whether it were nice or not to eavesdrop. All I thought of
was my intense desire to hear what those two would say next.

"Like grandmother, like grand-daughter, I suppose," went on the
ex-cowboy baronet, James Courtenaye. "A hard-hearted lot my only
surviving female relatives seem to be! Her husband at the Front, liable
to die at any minute; her grandmoth