"We'd heard so much from everybody of the pranks they play at these vegliones of yours that we wanted to play one, too--we wanted to intrigue you and a lot of other people. The trouble seems to be we did it too well. Land! I wish I hadn't done it! I wish Heaven I'd consulted you, or some one--We hatched it all up with Italo and Clotilde."

"Italo and Clotilde!"

"They were the two who came into the box and didn't say a word, for fear of being known by their voices. Then, after you had so politely seen us off, Estelle and I in the carriage put on black dominos and crows'

beaks, and after driving around a couple of blocks came back and found Italo and Clotilde waiting for us. Clotilde had put off her black domino in the dressing-room; she was dressed under it exactly like her brother.

D'you see now how we worked it? Estelle took Clotilde's arm, and I took Italo's; we separated and kept apart, and it was as if there had only been one couple, the same as there had been since the beginning of the evening."

"I see."

"I've been dying to tell you about it ever since, but I just haven't told you. I don't know what I was waiting for. I guess I was enjoying letting you stay fooled. I had the greatest time, bad cess to it!

talking to some people I knew and to a lot that I didn't. Italo would whisper to me beforehand what to say, and I'd say it. I didn't always know what it was about, but nothing was further from my mind than to wish to insult anybody. I was so excited I didn't always notice what I did say, it just seemed playful and funny and in the spirit of the rest.

I went up to Charlie Hunt and spoke to him. I put a flea in his ear, and I'm positive from his face that he didn't know me. I came near going up to you when you were talking with that Mr. Guerra, but I was too much afraid you'd recognize me; you're so sharp, and, then, you're the one most particularly who has heard me talk with my English accent, which I put on on the night of the _veglione_ so as not to be known."

"Your English accent? That explains."

"What?"

"Your English accent is a caricature of Antonia's."

"I don't have to tell you, I suppose, that I had no idea of personating Antonia."

"The very difference between the original and your imitation might seem the result of an effort on her part to disguise her speech."

"I've been a fool, of course, and some of the blame is mine, but just let me get hold of Italo and watch me shake the teeth out of his confounded little head. I remember perfectly speaking to the old general that we saw at Antonia's that day and to the old viscount who came to my ball."

"Do you remember what you said?"

"Not exactly, but in both cases it seemed harmless. I wouldn't have said it if it hadn't seemed harmless. I couldn't have wished to insult them, how could any one suppose it? To the general it was something about a horse."

Gerald gave a sound of raging disgust.

Aurora waited, watching him.

"Was it very bad?" she asked finally, and held her breath for his answer.

"Just as bad as possible. Ceccherelli deserves to be flayed. Is the man mad? And what, may I ask, did you say to De Breze?"

"I only remember it was something about ermine. I forgot until this moment that I meant to ask Italo what the joke was about ermine. Was that too very bad?"

"Just as bad as possible. No, rather worse. Both relate to ancient bits of scandal that no one would dare refer to--that would place a man referring to them in the necessity to fight a duel. Mind you, mean and discredited scandal. I won't resurrect it to enlighten you. You can interrogate Signor Ceccherelli, who has really distinguished himself in his quality of habitue of this house and your particular friend."

"I know you're angry, Gerald; I don't wonder you're ready to call names.

But the thing is simple, isn't it, after all, now that I understand. The harm done isn't such as can never be mended. All I have to do is write to Antonia and tell her I was the black crow, or, if you advise, write to the two gentlemen I've offended."

"Heavens, no! you can't do that!"

"Why can't I?"

"You can't; that's all. You can't admit that that little vermin is on terms of intimacy with you permitting his prompting your Carnival witticisms, and you can't hope to make any one in Florence believe you didn't understand what you were saying."

"Yes, I can, my friend; I can make them believe. I can speak the truth.

I can, at all events, prove that Antonia had nothing whatever to do with it."

"No, no, no, I tell you! You can do nothing whatever about it. Your name must not be allowed to appear in the matter at all. It would serve Ceccherelli right that his part in the disgraceful business should be known, dangerous little beast that he is. He would receive a lesson, and an excellent thing it would be; but that, again, might involve you. One couldn't trust him to keep your name out of it. Besides, it would very likely ruin him, disgusting little beggar."

"You leave him to me! He roared his throat to a frazzle the other night, and can't make a sound, but he'll come round as soon as he's better, and then if I don't give it to him! Little cuss!... But I'm to blame, too, Gerald. You told me over and over that I oughtn't to encourage him to gossip as I did, but I went right on doing it because it was as good as a play to hear him tell his queer stories in his queer English. It amused me, I've no other excuse. I sort of knew all the time that it was wrong. And so he got bolder and bolder and finally overstepped the line.

And now I've got my come-uppance. I'll settle him, trust _me_, and I'll write to Antonia, and I'll write the two gentlemen, if you'll just tell me where to write."

"Must I tell you again that you are above all things to do nothing of the kind? Not certainly if you think of continuing to live in Florence.

Leave the matter to me. I am well acquainted with everybody in question and shall be able to satisfy them, I hope, while leaving them completely in the dark as to the real culprit."

Mrs. Hawthorne appeared to hesitate.

"I really should feel better if I could confess," she said. "It would take a whole load off my chest. You see, I don't know your ways of doing over here; that would be my way. They might all forgive me and say I was just a fool. But if they didn't, and, as you seem to fear, made Florence too unpleasant to hold me, luckily I'm not tied down. I'm free. I can pull up stakes when I please and go pitch my tent elsewhere."

"The delightful independence of riches! The grandeur and detachment of your point of view!" he spoke in a flare of excited bitterness. "What you have said is equivalent to saying that your friends of Florence are a matter of complete indifference to you!"

"I _love_ my friends of Florence, and you know it, Gerald Fane! And I don't believe they'd ever turn against me, no matter what trouble I'd made for myself at that confounded veglione. So I don't look to leaving Florence just yet a while. You know I was only talking. I felt perfectly safe--But it's astonishing to me, dear boy, how ready you are to get mad at me. When you know me so well, too. You ought to be ashamed."

"I am, dear. It's my temper that's bad. And you're so kind," he meekly subsided. "But you _are_ trying, you know," he added, after a moment, with returning vivacity, "what with the extreme bad taste of your masked ball adventures, and your obstinate determination to publish them, and then your insane obstinacy to make a show of yourself as a colored nurse in this vaudeville--But I forgot, I had sworn to myself not to speak of that again. May I count upon you at least to leave entirely to me the matter of exculpating Antonia to General Costanzi and De Breze?"

"Oh, very well, if you think best."

"Will you promise solemnly to be silent on the whole matter?"

"All right. But I don't like it, Gerald. If I've done wrong, I should feel lots easier in my mind if I could tell."

"That feeling of yours is precisely what I wish to guard against. Do believe that in this matter the old Florentine I am knows better than you. Promise."

"All right, I promise."

After a moment, "There's no chance, is there, of your changing your mind about the other matter"--he asked sheepishly,--"the matter which I must not mention? No, I supposed not. I am perfectly aware of my presumption in making any suggestion to you on the subject. But if you knew how the thought of it torments me...."

"You'll get over it when you see me. You'll just laugh with the rest."

"Enough. Good night," he said stiffly, but it is doubtful that the word of leave-taking was anything more than a mode of expressing displeasure, or that departure would immediately have succeeded upon his rising from his chair, had not a sound of coughing from the neighboring room called up before him an image of Harriet Estelle, wide awake, with a stern and feverish eye fixed on the clock.

He was startled into a consciousness of the lateness of the hour.

"Good night!" he repeated in a guilty whisper. "I daren't look at my watch. I'm afraid I've kept you shockingly late."

The night, when Gerald went out into it, was quieter and dryer. The streets were altogether empty. He had quite forgotten having felt ill earlier in the evening, and did not remember it even when he found his teeth chattering as a result of coming out into the penetrating night air after sitting so close to the fire. A thing he did remember, as he took out the large iron key to the door of home, was that after all Helen Aurora telling him her story he did not know how she came to be Mrs. Hawthorne. There must have been a second marriage there in Denver, one of those little-considered episodes in American life, perhaps, that are hardly thought worth mentioning. She sometimes spoke of "the judge."

She had spoken to-night of a doctor, son of the judge. No, he decided, it could not be either of them. The second husband, whoever he had been, had clearly not been important, and he was dead, for Mrs. Foss had told him explicitly that Aurora was a real, and not what is called in America a gra.s.s, widow. From this second husband it must have been that she derived her wealth.