"you 'll leave her in the dark
touching your personal connection with Sampaolo."

Susanna, being quite in the light touching that connection, could not
help smiling.

"I must play the game on his conditions, and feign ignorance of all
that he does n't tell," she reminded herself. "But fancy his being so
secretive!"

"I hope the 'man who had' reported favourably of us?" she threw out.

"H'm--yes," said Anthony, with deliberation. "The truth is, he
reported nothing. He was one of those inarticulate fellows who travel
everywhere, and can give no better account of their travels than just a
catalogue of names. He chanced to let fall that he had visited
Sampaolo, and I thus learned that such a place existed. I can't tell
why, but the fact struck me, and stuck in my mind, and I have ever
since been curious to know something about it."

"You said you knew _all_ about it," Susanna complained, her eyes
rebukeful, her tone a tone of disappointment.

"Oh, that was a manner of speaking," Anthony quibbled, plausible and
unperturbed. "I meant that I knew of its existence--which, after all,
is relatively a good deal, being vastly more than most people know."

"It would be worth your while," said Susanna, "the next time you find
yourself in its vicinity, to do Sampaolo the honour of an inspection.
It is easily reached. The Austrian-Lloyd coasting steamers from Venice
call there once a week, and there is a boat every Monday and Thursday
from Ancona. Sampaolo is an extremely interesting spot,--interesting
by reason of its natural beauty, its picturesque population, and (to
me, at least) by reason of its absurdly romantic, serio-comic,
lamentable little history."

"Ah--?" said Anthony, but with a suspension of the voice, with a
solicitude of eye and posture, that pressed her to continue.

"He is a poor dissembler," thought Susanna. "As if any mere chance
outsider would care a fig to hear about Sampaolo. However, so much the
better."

"Yes," she said, and again she seemed rapt in dreamy contemplation of
an air-vision. "The natural beauty of Sampaolo is to my thinking
unparalleled. At a distance, as your ship approaches it, Sampaolo lies
on the horizon like a beautiful soft cloud, all vague rose-colours and
purples, a beautiful soft pinnacle of cloud. Then gradually, as you
come nearer, the cloud changes, crystallises; and Sampaolo is like a
great wonderful carving, a great wonderful carved jewel, a cameo cut on
th