he not literally
carried her, panting, from the scene of her first triumph.

[Illustration: THE GLOOMY, FADED GLORIES OF THE MUSTY PALACE]

Some idea of the relentless iron hands that tamed that brilliant,
baffled creature--and hers was the only strain in Margarita that
genius need be called on to vindicate!--I won from the old caretaker,
a family retainer, who showed me, on a proper day, over the gloomy,
faded glories of the musty palace. She was always heretic at heart,
the old gossip mumbled, with furtive glances from my gold piece to the
pictured lords above her, as if afraid they would revenge themselves
for this tittle-tattle, heretic and light. A servant or a duke, a
flower-seller or His Eminence, all was one to her crazy English
notions. And the truth--how the mad creature told it! Blurted it out
to everyone, so that they had to keep her shut up, finally. And would
have her dogs about her--eating like Christians! And no money, when
all was said. _Her children?_ Four sons, all dead now, and their souls
with Christ--one, of the Sacred College. Never a generation without
the red hat, thank God. No daughters. _Not so much as one?_ Why should
there be? Some were spared daughters, when there was no money, and a
blessing, too.

_What figure had been cut from that group of four youths, cut so that
a small hand that grasped a cup-and-ball showed plainly against one
brother's sleeve?_ She did not know--how should she? Perhaps a cousin.
It was painted by a famous Englishman and kept because it might bring
money some day. _Then why cut it?_ How should she know? There were no
daughters and the hour was up. Would the _signore_ follow her?

And Sarah was alarmed for the Bradley blood! Sarah feared for the
pollution of that sacred fluid derived from English yeomen (at best),
filtered through the middle-class expatriates of a nation itself
hopelessly middle class beside the pure strain of a race of kings that
was old and majestically forgotten ere Romulus was dreamed of! Back,
back through those mysterious Etruscans, back to the very gods
themselves, an absolutely unbroken line, stretched the forefathers of
Margarita. Long before Bethlehem meant more than any other obscure
village, long before its Mystic Babe began there his Stations of the
Cross and brought to an end at Calvary the sacrifice that sent his
agents overseas to civilise the savage Britons and make those
middle-class yeomen possible, Margarita's ancestors had fo