hares in the woods."

"Don't get too interested, and forget to come and receive your dear
cousin and her American friend, who for all you know may be the most
fascinating woman in the world," Marie called after her husband as he
walked away.

His smile named the woman who was above all others for him; and though
Marie knew herself his goddess, she never ceased to crave the assurance.

When Angelo had found his Panama and gone down the loggia steps into the
garden, she laughed a soft and happy laugh. "Poor darling!" she said.
"The fox is an excuse. He won't come back till the last minute. One
would think he was afraid of his cousin! It's quite pathetic. Just
because he had an innocent flirtation with her a hundred years ago."

Marie picked up Idina's letter, which lay in the hammock. "I wonder what
a graphologist--if that's the right word--would make of this
handwriting? I'm no expert. But to me the writing expresses the woman
as I see her: heavy, strong, intelligent, lacking all charm of sex, and
selfishly cold."

"Do you think Miss Bland cold?" asked Mary. "I've seen her only once,
and I don't pretend to be a judge of character. Yet I had a queer
thought about her when we met: that she was like a volcano under snow."

The Princess did not answer, for the character of Idina being of little
importance to her, she had already begun to think of something else. She
was comfortably glad to be younger and far, far more attractive than
Miss Bland. She was resolving that, before the two guests arrived, she
would put on a particularly becoming dress in order that the heroine of
the old flirtation might more keenly than ever envy Angelo's wife. This
idea she did not clothe definitely in words, but it floated in her mind.
"Miss Bland must have come down from the Annonciata, to lurk about
Mentone waiting for my answer," she said aloud, having reread the note.
"Otherwise she wouldn't have time to arrive here for lunch at one, after
her messenger got back."

It was now Mary's turn to be inattentive, for she was adding a
postscript to her letter, which but for that addition she had finished.

"Marie dreamed of pigeons last night," she scribbled hastily. "She is
superstitious about them, and says they mean trouble and parting. That
seems rather funny to me, after the hundreds I saw in Monte Carlo and
made friends with, and fed every day. I'm glad I am not superstitious,
especially now that you and I are separated. How glorious