ne would call Charlie Hunt
out to fight a duel to punish him for a slur on me. Oh, he can fence
just as well as the Italians he was brought up with. I've seen the
fencing-swords in his studio. But"--she calmed down--"I wouldn't permit
that sort of thing. It's ridiculous. I don't believe in it."

Cooling to normal, she laughed, with a return to the light of reality.
"He doesn't believe in it, either, I shouldn't suppose."

CHAPTER XXII

Leslie, arriving early next day, read off the newspaper article, making
a free translation of it, as follows:

* * * * *

When a thing is too successful, it is seldom natural; and so when there
appeared in our city a _signora_, blond of hair, azure of eye, with
the complexion of delicate, luminous roses, red and white, whose name
was at once Aurora and _Albaspina_,--Hawthorne,--floral counterpart
of dawn, we should have had suspicions. That we had none does not
prevent our feeling no very great surprise when we learn that the bearer
of the poetic and more than appropriate name is called in sober truth
Elena Barton. The more beautiful name was adopted by a child acting out
its fairy-stories; it was remembered and re-adopted by a woman when she
wished to detach her life from a past which neither charity, fidelity,
nor devotion to a sacred duty had succeeded in keeping from sorrow and
the deadly aspersions of malignity.

The _gentilissima_ person of the irradiating smile, which, however
briefly seen, must be long remembered, whom we have grown accustomed
this winter to meeting in the salons where assembles all that is most
distinguished among foreigners, whose name we have grown accustomed to
finding foremost in every work of charity, has a title to our esteem far
beyond the ordinary member of an indolent and favored class. To
alleviate suffering has been the chosen work of those hands that
Florence also has found ever open and ready with their help. It was in
effect the extent of their beneficence which brought about the black
imbroglio from which Elena Barton chose to flee and take refuge in the
City of Flowers under the _soave_ and harmonious name by which we
know her.

Her life had been for several years devoted to the care of an old man
afflicted with a most malignant and terrible cancer in the face. She had
filled toward him so perfectly the part of a daughter that his gratitude
made her upon his death an equal sharer in his fo