It was a few weeks
after Mrs. Merriam's death, when she had recovered from the shock which
was hardly sorrow, that Angela said to herself: "Now she is beyond being
grieved by anything I do, and I can go away--for good." For the girl had
been under the frail cold woman's sway, as the strong man, Franklin
Merriam, had been in his time; and Mrs. Merriam had derived such pleasure
from having a daughter who was a Princess di Sereno that Angela could
hardly have found courage to deprive her of it.

At home, both in the country and at her palace in Rome, the Princess had
been waited on by two French maids, one of whom dressed her, while the
other kept her belongings in order. When she travelled, as she often did,
one or both went with her; to Egypt; to Algeria; to Russia; to Paris; or
to England. But "Mrs. May" had no maid; and, landing in New York, it
seemed that she was the only person who did not meet with a welcome from
friends on the dock.

Suddenly, she ceased to enjoy her isolation. For the first time since
leaving Rome "on a long visit to relatives in America" (according to
newspaper paragraphs), the Princess di Sereno did not hug her loneliness
and her secret. She hardly knew what to do as she stood under the big
letter "M" waiting to have her luggage examined. Her fellow "M's" as well
as all the other letters appeared to be having desperate trouble with the
custom-house men, who clawed out the contents of their trunks and then
calmly left the cowed owners to stuff everything back as best they could.

Angela's heart beat fast when her turn came, and she wished for
long-nosed, hard-voiced Josephine as a bulwark; but the ordeal was not as
bad as she expected. She looked at her inquisitor with the air of a hunted
child who had got lost and hardly hoped ever to be found; so the
protective instincts were aroused, and the wind was tempered to the shorn
lamb. In half an hour after the ship had docked, Mrs. May was inquiring of
a large, obliging Irishman (who had a vast store of knowledge concerning
all useful subjects) how on earth she was to secure a cab.

Her hotel was decided upon, and rooms engaged. An old friend of Mrs.
Merriam, a cosmopolitan American woman, had once praised the Hotel
Valmont, Angela had remembered; and driving from Twenty-third Street up
into the Forties, New York was almost as strange to her as if she had
never seen it before. Indeed, she had seen little of it, for the Merriams
had lived in Boston