ke in a tone of such utter indifference that Guido stared at her
in surprise. A moment later they had rejoined her mother and the
Princess.

CHAPTER III

At the beginning of the twentieth century Rome has become even more
cosmopolitan than it used to be, for the Romans themselves are turning
into cosmopolitans, and the old traditional, serious, gloomy, and
sometimes dramatic life of the patriarchal system has almost died out.
One meets Romans of historical names everywhere, nowadays, in London, in
Paris, and in Vienna, speaking English and French, and sometimes German,
with extraordinary correctness, as much at home, to all appearance, in
other capitals as they are in their own, and intimately familiar with
the ways of many societies in many places.

Cecilia Palladio, at eighteen years of age, had probably not spent a
third of her life in Rome, and had been educated in different parts of
the world and in a variety of ways. Her father, Count Palladio, as has
been explained, had been engaged in promoting a number of undertakings,
of which several had succeeded, and at his death, which had happened
when Cecilia had been eight years old, he had left her part of his
considerable fortune in safe guardianship, leaving his wife a life
interest in the remainder. His old ally, the banker Solomon Goldbirn of
Vienna, had administered the whole inheritance with wisdom and
integrity, and at her marriage Cecilia would dispose of several millions
of francs, and would ultimately inherit as much more from her mother's
share. From a European point of view, she was therefore a notable
heiress, and even in the new world of millionnaires she would at least
have been considered tolerably well off, though by no means what is
there called rich.

Two years after Palladio's death her mother had married Count
Fortiguerra, who had begun life in the army, then passed to diplomacy,
had risen rapidly to the post of ambassador, and had died suddenly at
Madrid when barely fifty years old, and when Cecilia was sixteen.

The girl had a clear recollection of her own father, though she had
never been with him very much, as his occupations constantly took him to
distant parts of the world. He had seemed an old man to her, and had
indeed been much older than her mother, for he had been a patriot in the
later days of the Italian revolutions, and when still young he had been
with Garibaldi in 1860. Cecilia remembered