t first. I think you know her--Madame d'Aranjuez. I
used to see her often just at that time."

"Madame d'Aranjuez?" Spicca looked up sharply, pausing with his glass in
his hand.

"You know her?"

"Very well indeed," answered the old man, before he drank. "Tell me,
Orsino," he continued, when he had finished the draught, "are you in
love with that lady?"

Orsino was surprised by the directness of the question, but he did not
show it.

"Not in the least," he answered, coolly.

"Then why did you act as though you were?" asked Spicca looking him
through and through.

"Do you mean to say that you were watching me all winter?" inquired
Orsino, bending his black eyebrows rather angrily.

"Circumstances made it inevitable that I should know of your visits.
There was a time when you saw her every day."

"I do not know what the circumstances, as you call them, were," answered
Orsino. "But I do not like to be watched--even by my father's old
friends."

"Keep your temper, Orsino," said Spicca quietly. "Quarrelling is always
ridiculous unless somebody is killed, and then it is inconvenient. If
you understood the nature of my acquaintance with Maria Consuelo--with
Madame d'Aranjuez, you would see that while not meaning to spy upon you
in the least, I could not be ignorant of your movements."

"Your acquaintance must be a very close one," observed Orsino, far from
pacified.

"So close that it has justified me in doing very odd things on her
account. You will not accuse me of taking a needless and officious
interest in the affairs of others, I think. My own are quite enough for
me. It chances that they are intimately connected with the doings of
Madame d'Aranjuez, and have been so for a number of years. The fact that
I do not desire the connexion to be known does not make it easier for me
to act, when I am obliged to act at all. I did not ask an idle question
when I asked you if you loved her."

"I confess that I do not at all understand the situation," said Orsino.

"No. It is not easy to understand, unless I give you the key to it. And
yet you know more already than any one in Rome. I shall be obliged if
you will not repeat what you know."

"You may trust me," answered Orsino, who saw from Spicca's manner that
the matter was very serious.

"Thank you. I see that you are cured of the idea that I have been
frivolously spying upon you for my own amusement."

Orsino was silent. He thought of what had happened after