asked suddenly.

"In the imagination of society, Duchessa," answered Veronica. "I have
none. I live alone."

The Duchessa almost dropped her cup.

"Alone?" she cried, in amazement. "You live alone? In such a place as
this!" She could not believe her ears.

"Yes," said Veronica, smiling. "Does it seem so very terrible to you? I
live alone--and I am waited on only by women. I daresay that surprises
you, too."

"Alone?" The Duca had got his breath, and sat open-mouthed, holding his
tea-cup low between his knees, in both hands. "Alone! At your age! A
young girl! But the world--society? What will it think?"

"Unless it thinks as I do, I do not care to know," answered Veronica,
indifferently. "Let me give you some bread and butter, Duca."

"Bread and butter? No--no thank you--no--I--I am very much astonished! I
am stupefied! It is the most extraordinary thing I ever heard of!"

"Of course everybody thinks that you have an elderly companion--" chimed
in the Duchessa.

"One of your Spanish relations," said the Duca, with anxious eyes.
"Surely, she was here--"

"And is away just now," suggested his wife. "That accounts for--"

"Not at all," said Veronica, almost laughing. "She never existed. I came
here alone, I live here alone, and I mean to live here alone as long as
I please. The world may say what it pleases. I shall be three-and-twenty
years of age on my next birthday. Ask Don Teodoro whether I am not able
to take care of myself--and of Muro, too, for that matter!"

"Who is Don Teodoro?" asked the Duchessa, nervously, and still
altogether horrified.

"The parish priest," said Veronica. "A very learned and charitable old
man. He dines with me every evening."

"Then," replied the Duchessa, with a beginning of relief, "then you, and
your good priest, and your woman, make a sort of--of what shall I say--a
sort of little religious community here? Is that it?"

"We are not irreligious," Veronica replied, still at the point of
laughter. "Most of us hear mass every morning--the church is close by
the gate, on the other side of the great tower, you know--and we do not
eat meat on fast days--"

"Yes, yes, I understand!" interrupted the Duchessa, grasping at any
straw by which she could drag the extraordinary young princess within
conceivable distance of what she herself considered socially proper.
"And you spend your time in good works, in the village, of course, and
in edifying conversation with Don Teodoro. Yes