pe of the Caesars had its last stronghold in the United States of
the eighteenth century. Isabel looked like a very young Roman matron,
but her resemblance to the stately effigies in the galleries of Florence
and Rome, strong in virtue or vice, was so striking that once more Flora
longed for her support. A woman with such capabilities would be wasted
in the role of a mere countess--but as the wife of an aspiring Liberal
statesman! She devoutly wished that the American had arrived six months
earlier, or that Brathland still lived.

But she was a very tactful person and was about to drop the subject,
when Isabel slowly turned her eyes. They looked so much like steel that
for the moment they seemed to have lost their blue.

"I have made up my mind to do something to prevent this marriage," she
announced. "I do not know what, as yet. I shall be guided by events."

And Flora devoutly kissed her, then gossipped pleasantly about the other
guests and the people in the neighborhood. Isabel was curious to know
something of the duchess she was to meet on the morrow.

"Does she really look like a duchess?" she asked, so innocently that
Flora laughed and forgot the Roman-American profile, and the fateful
eyes that had given her an uncomfortable sensation a moment before.

"Well--yes--she does--rather. It is the fashion in these days not to--to
be smart above all things, excessively democratic, animated, unaffected,
clever. But our duchess here is rather old-fashioned, very lofty of head
and expression. She has a look of floating from peak to peak, and
although passee is still a beauty. To be honest, she is hideously dull,
but as good a creature as ever lived, and all that the ideal duchess
should be--so high-minded that she has never suspected the larkiest of
her friends."

"Well, I am glad she looks the role. I have artistic cravings."

They drove for an hour through the beautiful quiet green country, past
many old stone villages that might have been the direct sequence of the
cave era. An automobile skimmed past and the pony sat down on its
haunches. Isabel had a glimpse of a delicate high-bred face set like a
panel in a parted curtain.

"That is the duchess," said Miss Thangue. "She wouldn't wear goggles for
the world, and only gets into an automobile occasionally to please the
duke. There is nothing old-fashioned about him."

"She looks as if her name ought to be Lucy," said Isabel, to whom the
pure empty face had appea