lia. Lamberti looked
steadily out, biting his extinguished cigar, and his features contracted
as if he were in pain.

He had come to his friend instinctively, as his friend would have come
to him, meaning to tell him what had happened. But he hesitated.
Besides, it might all have been only his imagination; in part it could
have been nothing else, and the rest was a mere coincidence. But he had
never been an imaginative man, and it was strange that he should be so
much affected by a mere illusion.

He started and turned suddenly, sure that some one was close behind him.
But there was no one, and a moment later Guido came back. Anxious not to
annoy his friend by anything like curiosity, he made a pretence of
setting his writing table in order, turned one of the lamps down a
little--he hated electric light--and then looked at the picture over the
fireplace.

"Did you ever hear of that Baumgarten, the German art critic?" he asked,
without turning round.

"Baumgarten--let me see! I fancy I have seen the name to-day." Lamberti
tried to concentrate his attention.

"You just read it in my aunt's letter," Guido answered. "You
remember--she asks if he may come to-morrow. I wonder why."

"To value your property, of course," replied Lamberti, roughly.

"Do you think so?" Guido did not seem at all surprised. "I daresay. She
is quite capable of it. She is welcome to everything I possess if she
will only leave me in peace. But just now, when she has evidently made
up her mind to marry me to this new heiress, it does not seem likely
that she would take trouble to find out what my pictures are worth, does
it?"

"It all depends on what she thinks of the chances that you will marry or
not."

"What do you think of them, yourself?" asked Guido, idly.

He was glad of anything to talk about while Lamberti was in his present
mood.

"What a question!" exclaimed the latter. "How should I know whether you
are going to fall in love with the girl or not?"

"I am half afraid I am," said Guido, thoughtfully.

His man announced dinner, and the two friends crossed the hall to the
little dining room, and sat down under the soft light of the
old-fashioned olive-oil lamp that hung from the ceiling. Everything on
the table was old, worn, and spotless. The silver was all of the style
of the first Empire, with an interlaced monogram surmounted by a royal
crown. The same device was painted in gold in the middle of the plain
white plates, whi