athalie's portrait as with that of the great beauty, Miss
Grant, who was always gambling at the Casino, the place where wicked
people said that Prince Giovanni played. No exciting detail did Luciola
neglect.

The cure listened to the end, without interrupting, greatly to the
housekeeper's disappointment, as she had made her narrative piquant in
the hope of tempting her master to ask questions. But he showed no
emotion of any kind, and only remarked at last that Luciola was quite
right not to believe gossip about the Prince, or indeed evil of any one.

Nevertheless her story left him reflective. He thought it not impossible
that Vanno was gambling; and if it were the case, several things would
be explainable. It was many days since the Prince had come to
Roquebrune, although the cure had done what he did not wish to do, in
order to please his one-time pupil.

Vanno was well aware that it was not the cure's affair to call upon
strangers out of his own parish, except by special request. To call
uninvited upon a person in Monaco might seem to the cure and abbe of San
Carlo like an intrusion: and to present himself at a hotel, inquiring
for a young lady whom he did not even know to be a Catholic, had been an
ordeal. This, for the Principino's sake, he had done not once but twice,
as Vanno knew. And in truth the Prince had seemed too preoccupied with
disappointment because Miss Grant was not at home to express much
gratitude when the cure told him of the two calls.

Not since the third day before Christmas had Vanno come to Roquebrune,
nor had he written his old friend; and certainly the cure had wondered,
for now the new year was more than a week old; and always the weather
had been of that brilliance the peasant women consider necessary after
Noel for the washing of the Christ child's clothes by the Sainte Vierge,
His mother. There had been no such excuse as rain to prevent a visit;
but at last the cure guessed at a reason which might have kept Vanno
from wishing to see him.

On New Year's Day--the great fete--the priest had called in the
afternoon on Prince and Princess Della Robbia, at the Villa Mirasole,
knowing that their arrival had been delayed until the night before.
Vanno, who had lunched with them, had already gone; and it was no news
to the cure that the younger brother was not living at Cap Martin.
Angelo referred to this change of plan, saying laughingly that no doubt
the foolish boy feared to interrupt a t