nd
that I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with her
'soul.'"

"Possibly not. There's always an exception to every rule," said
Cleek. "Her ladyship may be the shining exception to this unpleasant
one of the 'face painters.' Let us hope so. English, is she?"

"Oh, yes--that is, her father was English and she herself was born
in Buckinghamshire. Her mother, however, was an Italian, a lineal
descendant of a once great and powerful Roman family named de
Catanei."

"Which," supplemented Cleek, with one of his curious one-sided
smiles, "through an ante-papal union between Pope Alexander VI
and the beautiful Giovanna de Catanei--otherwise Vanozza--gave to the
world those two arch-poisoners and devils of iniquity, Caesar and
Lucretia Borgia. Lady Essington's family tree supplies a mixture
which is certainly unique: a fine, fruity English pie with a rotten
apple in it. Hum-m-m! if her ladyship has inherited any of the
beauty of her famous ancestress--for in 1490, when she flourished,
Giovanna de Catanei was said to be the most beautiful woman in the
world--she should be something good to look upon."

"She is," replied Narkom. "You'll find her, when she comes, one of
the handsomest and most charming women you ever met."

"Ah, then she has inherited some of the attractions and
accomplishments of her famous forbears. I wonder if there has
also come down to her, as well, the formula of those remarkable
secret poisons for which Lucretia Borgia and her brother Caesar
were so widely famed. They were marvellous things, those Borgia
decoctions--marvellous and abominable."

"Horrible!" agreed Narkom, a curious shadow of unrest coming over
him at this subject rising at this particular time.

"Modern chemistry has, I believe, been quite unable to duplicate
them. There is, for instance, that appalling thing the aqua tofana,
the very fumes of which caused instant death."

"Aqua tofana was not a Bornean poison, my friend," said Cleek, with a
smile. "It was discovered more than two hundred years after _their_
time--in 1668, to be exact--by one Jean Baptiste de Gaudin, Signeur
de St. Croix, the paramour and accomplice of that unnatural French
fiend, Marie Marquise de Brinvilliers. Its discoverer himself died
through dropping the glass mask from his face and inhaling the
fumes while he was preparing the hellish mixture. The secret of its
manufacture did not, however, die with him. Many chemists can,
to-day, reproduce it.