ct from
Italy; and I mentioned the telegram you had sent from Trieste, and that
you had been recommended to my courtesy by a gentleman whom I well knew
and who had many times lodged here. But they went away, and came back
again next day, making some inquiries about you, and asking if numbers
so and so were those of your rooms. You were out, and whether they
visited your rooms or not I cannot say. This is all that I know. Now
they are here again, and if they say you must go to the police-court,
there will be no other way but to go."

"But I don't understand. I have my passport: there is my bill, receipted
at the hotel in Trieste six days ago. I never knew before it was a crime
for two English-speaking women to travel alone or to stop at a Grand
Hotel. Of what are we suspected? and upon what grounds suspected?"

"Why, a napkin has been seen among your effects with the mark of the
Grand Hotel upon it."

After a moment's thought it flashed into my mind that it was that Nice
serviette, and, more amused than annoyed, I exclaimed, "Oh, I have it.
'Tis that serviette St. Cecilia took at Nice;" and opening my trunk soon
had it in my hands, holding it up by two corners for the men to see and
explaining how it came into my possession.

"It will go very hard with Madame Cecilia," observed the spokesman: "you
will please give us her address."

My indiscretion at once became apparent, but I was a complete novice in
"being arrested." To involve Cecilia in the affair would be but an
aggravation of matters, and I at once decided, come what might, I would
not give the police her address. Looking at the half-obliterated stamp
in the corner of the napkin, there was unmistakably the mark "Grand
Hotel," but directly underneath "Nice," which the police, in their ardor
to find me guilty of something which I could not find out, had
undoubtedly mistaken for Wien, the German name for Vienna. I called
their attention to the "Nice," asking what jurisdiction the Austrian
government had over matters relating to hotels in Italy. They replied by
looking very closely at the stamp, and then one of them took my passport
and the napkin and went out, leaving the other man to guard our
apartment, and soon returned with a new arrest for myself and my
_gesellschafterin_, Miss Barton still refusing to give her name. The
landlord had only placed mine in the visitors' book, thereby making
himself liable to a fine of eight or ten dollars.

Nothing could hav