ria Angelina felt a queer tightening within her, as if some one had
tied a band about her heart.

"You don't have such fires in Italy," he observed, dropping down upon
the rug across from her, and refilling that battered pipe of his. "I
well remember when I ordered a fire and the _cameraria_ came in with a
bunch of twigs."

Madly Maria Angelina fell upon the revelation.

"You have been in Italy!"

"Oh, more than once! But all before the war."

"And you have been in Rome? Oh, to think of that! But where did you
stay? Whom did you know there, Signor?"

Barry grinned. "Head waiters!"

"You knew no Romans, then? Oh, but that was a pity."

"I can well believe it, Signorina!"

"Oh, Rome can be very gay--though I am not out in society myself, and
know so little. . . . What did you do, then? I suppose you went to the
Forum and the Vatican and the Via Appia like all the tourists and drove
out to the Coliseum by moonlight?"

Delightedly she laughed as Barry Elder confirmed her account of his
activities.

"Me, I have never seen the Coliseum by moonlight," she reported
plaintively, adding with eager wistfulness, "And did you buy violets on
the Spanish Stairs? And throw a penny into the Trevi fountain to ensure
your return? And do you remember the street that turns off left, the Via
Poli? From there you come quick to my house, the Palazzo Santonini----"

"And do you really live in a palace?" It was Barry's turn to question.
"A really truly palace? And is your father a really truly prince?"

"Nothing so great! He is a count--but of a very old family, the
Santonini," Maria Angelina explained with becoming pride.

"And is your mother of a very old----"

"My mother is American--the cousin of Mrs. Blair. But Mamma has never
been back in America--she is too devoted to us, is Mamma, and she has so
much to look after for Papa. Papa is charming but he does not manage."

"That makes complications," said Barry gravely.

"And Francisco, my brother, is just like him. He is always running
bills, now that he is in the army. And he was so brave in the war that
Mamma cannot bear to be cross. He will have to marry an heiress, that
boy," she sighed and Barry Elder's eyes lighted in amusement.

"How many of you are there?" he wanted interestedly to know, and
vivaciously Maria Angelina informed him of her sisters, her life, her
lessons, the rare excursions, the pension at the seashore, the
engagement of her sister Lucia and Paolo T