etter if I could confess," she said. "It would
take a whole load off my chest. You see, I don't know your ways of doing
over here; that would be my way. They might all forgive me and say I was
just a fool. But if they didn't, and, as you seem to fear, made Florence
too unpleasant to hold me, luckily I'm not tied down. I'm free. I can
pull up stakes when I please and go pitch my tent elsewhere."

"The delightful independence of riches! The grandeur and detachment of
your point of view!" he spoke in a flare of excited bitterness. "What
you have said is equivalent to saying that your friends of Florence are
a matter of complete indifference to you!"

"I _love_ my friends of Florence, and you know it, Gerald Fane! And
I don't believe they'd ever turn against me, no matter what trouble I'd
made for myself at that confounded veglione. So I don't look to leaving
Florence just yet a while. You know I was only talking. I felt perfectly
safe--But it's astonishing to me, dear boy, how ready you are to get mad
at me. When you know me so well, too. You ought to be ashamed."

"I am, dear. It's my temper that's bad. And you're so kind," he meekly
subsided. "But you _are_ trying, you know," he added, after a
moment, with returning vivacity, "what with the extreme bad taste of
your masked ball adventures, and your obstinate determination to publish
them, and then your insane obstinacy to make a show of yourself as a
colored nurse in this vaudeville--But I forgot, I had sworn to myself
not to speak of that again. May I count upon you at least to leave
entirely to me the matter of exculpating Antonia to General Costanzi and
De Breze?"

"Oh, very well, if you think best."

"Will you promise solemnly to be silent on the whole matter?"

"All right. But I don't like it, Gerald. If I've done wrong, I should
feel lots easier in my mind if I could tell."

"That feeling of yours is precisely what I wish to guard against. Do
believe that in this matter the old Florentine I am knows better than
you. Promise."

"All right, I promise."

After a moment, "There's no chance, is there, of your changing your mind
about the other matter"--he asked sheepishly,--"the matter which I must
not mention? No, I supposed not. I am perfectly aware of my presumption
in making any suggestion to you on the subject. But if you knew how the
thought of it torments me...."

"You'll get over it when you see me. You'll just laugh with the rest."

"Enough. Good n