mall necessaries, and returned early in the afternoon
with a noble appetite for dinner.

The Tre Croci had been in happier days a Bishop's lodging, and
possessed a dining-hall ceiled with black oak and adorned with frescos.
It was used as a general salle a manger for all dwellers in the inn,
and there accordingly I sat down to my long-deferred meal. At first
there were no other diners, and I had two maids, as well as
Gianbattista, to attend on my wants. Presently Madame d'Albani
entered, escorted by Cristine and by a tall gaunt serving-man, who
seemed no part of the hostelry. The landlord followed, bowing civilly,
and the two women seated themselves at the little table at the farther
end. "Il Signor Conte dines in his room," said Madame to the host, who
withdrew to see to that gentleman's needs.

I found my eyes straying often to the little party in the cool twilight
of that refectory. The man-servant was so old and battered, and of
such a dignity, that he lent a touch of intrigue to the thing. He stood
stiffly behind Madame's chair, handing dishes with an air of great
reverence--the lackey of a great noble, if I had ever seen the type.
Madame never glanced toward me, but conversed sparingly with Cristine,
while she pecked delicately at her food. Her name ran in my head with
a tantalizing flavour of the familiar. Albani! D'Albani! It was a
name not uncommon in the Roman States, but I had never heard it linked
to a noble family. And yet I had somehow, somewhere; and in the vain
effort at recollection I had almost forgotten my hunger. There was
nothing bourgeois in the little lady. The austere servants, the high
manner of condescension, spake of a stock used to deference, though,
maybe, pitifully decayed in its fortunes. There was a mystery in
these quiet folk which tickled my curiosity. Romance after all was not
destined to fail me at Santa Chiara.

My doings of the afternoon were of interest to me alone. Suffice it to
say that when at nightfall I found Gianbattista the trustee of a
letter. It was from Madame, written in a fine thin hand on a delicate
paper, and it invited me to wait upon the signor her father, that
evening at eight o'clock. What caught my eye was a coronet stamped in
a corner. A coronet, I say, but in truth it was a crown, the same as
surmounts the Arms Royal of England on the sign-board of a Court
tradesman. I marvelled at the ways of foreign heraldry. Either this
family of d'Alba