s gone."

This was madness! There had been no one there. I said as much.

Wrexler turned and faced me. "But there was," he said eagerly, "the most
beautiful girl I have ever seen, all done up in some old costume: great,
wide skirts, little waist, and a high lace collar. She had bronze curls,
great blue eyes and the loveliest face! I saw her immediately we came
in. She looked at both of us, but she smiled at me!"

I was in a quandary. Until now I had not given the staircase more than a
perfunctory glance. For all I knew, she might have been one of the
servants, peeping to see her new master. To Wrexler, impressionable,
strange creature that he was, the one glance might have so registered on
his mind that he kept on seeing her; for certainly she had not been
there when I looked. It seemed best to make light of the whole matter.

"Anyway, she's gone now. At least I can explain the costume. I take it
you didn't hear Carrier's announcements?"

Wrexler shook his head. I proceeded to enlighten him.

Instead of teasing me about the strange conditions my father's will had
imposed upon me, he was enthusiastic about the idea. "It's the one
period in history that has always interested me! Jim, we're in luck!
Imagine stepping back into Medici France for six months, shutting out
the world! Who knows but that Catherine herself may have stayed here, or
Marguerite de Valois--the Marguerite of Marguerites! Beautiful, but no
more beautiful than that girl on the stairs. I can hardly wait to see
her again."

I heartily hoped that he would see her, and that she was not entirely a
creature of his imagination. If she was real, I too was eager to meet
her.

Wrexler interrupted my thoughts.

"I feel as though I had come home," he said. "I'm crazy to explore.
Let's go shed these ugly things and begin to really live. Why, it's been
this I've been waiting for! It's lucky we're the same size."

* * * * *

Out of his irrelevance, I gathered the trend of his thought. "I wonder
where we go," I began.

Almost as though he had heard my words, a tall, commanding figure
stepped into the hall. He was attired richly in damask of a lovely, soft
blue with the same slashes of crimson that the servant livery had shown,
but in this case of finer material. He was a handsome man of about
thirty-four. His beard was pointed and he had a small mustache. His long
legs were encased in silken hose and he wore a dagger thrust t