n, and, after condescending to tease
like a boy, he woke suddenly to the fact of being ridiculous. He dropped
the subject with the abruptness that causes the opponent nearly to
topple over in surprise.

He had sat for a long moment in silence when, realizing that this
appeared ill-humored and a piece of effrontery, he started in haste to
talk again, choosing the first subject that came into his mind, which
was a thing he had meant to tell Aurora this evening, but had not
remembered until this moment. The wide distance between the subject he
dropped and the subject he took up would show, it was hoped, how
definitely he washed his hands of her doings.

"If you have wished for revenge on our friend Antonia," he said, "you
can be satisfied. She is in the most singular sort of difficulty."

"Oh, is she? I'm sorry," said Aurora. "Bless you! I never wished her any
harm."

"I went to see her yesterday. I had saved up my grievance and felt the
need to lay it before her. I think one should give an old friend who has
behaved badly the chance to make reparation, don't you? After being
angry as you saw me, I yet did not want to break with her. She was very
kind to me when I was young. At the same time I could not let her
rudeness to you pass. But I found her in such trouble already when I
went to see her yesterday that I said not one word of my grievance. It
will have to wait."

"You needn't think you must pick her up on my account. I don't care. But
what was the matter?"

"Two of her oldest friends, through an unaccountable mistake, turned
into enemies. Both insist that under cover of a mask at the last
_veglione_ she insulted them. Unfortunately, her best friends are
not kept by their actual knowledge of her from thinking it just possible
she might desire to amuse herself with getting a claw into them. She has
more than once given offense to her friends by putting them into her
books. But Antonia swore to me that she was innocent, and begged me to
convince De Breze. The villa she lives in is his property, and he has
requested her to vacate it. The other aggrieved one, General Costanzi,
she fears may succeed in preventing the publication of her next novel by
threat of a libel suit."

"Well, that sounds bad. But what do they say she's done?"

"The poor woman doesn't even know what she is supposed to have said;
insulted them is all she can gather. Both maintain that though she tried
to alter her voice they recognized her, a