resh hand
and could say no without lying.

"But you will have to change your name," said Mrs. Prest. "Juliana lives
out of the world as much as it is possible to live, but none the less
she has probably heard of Mr. Aspern's editors; she perhaps possesses
what you have published."

"I have thought of that," I returned; and I drew out of my pocketbook a
visiting card, neatly engraved with a name that was not my own.

"You are very extravagant; you might have written it," said my
companion.

"This looks more genuine."

"Certainly, you are prepared to go far! But it will be awkward about
your letters; they won't come to you in that mask."

"My banker will take them in, and I will go every day to fetch them. It
will give me a little walk."

"Shall you only depend upon that?" asked Mrs. Prest. "Aren't you coming
to see me?"

"Oh, you will have left Venice, for the hot months, long before
there are any results. I am prepared to roast all summer--as well as
hereafter, perhaps you'll say! Meanwhile, John Cumnor will bombard me
with letters addressed, in my feigned name, to the care of the padrona."

"She will recognize his hand," my companion suggested.

"On the envelope he can disguise it."

"Well, you're a precious pair! Doesn't it occur to you that even if you
are able to say you are not Mr. Cumnor in person they may still suspect
you of being his emissary?"

"Certainly, and I see only one way to parry that."

"And what may that be?"

I hesitated a moment. "To make love to the niece."

"Ah," cried Mrs. Prest, "wait till you see her!"

II

"I must work the garden--I must work the garden," I said to myself, five
minutes later, as I waited, upstairs, in the long, dusky sala, where the
bare scagliola floor gleamed vaguely in a chink of the closed shutters.
The place was impressive but it looked cold and cautious. Mrs. Prest had
floated away, giving me a rendezvous at the end of half an hour by
some neighboring water steps; and I had been let into the house,
after pulling the rusty bell wire, by a little red-headed, white-faced
maidservant, who was very young and not ugly and wore clicking pattens
and a shawl in the fashion of a hood. She had not contented herself
with opening the door from above by the usual arrangement of a creaking
pulley, though she had looked down at me first from an upper window,
dropping the inevitable challenge which in Italy precedes the hospitable
act. As a general thing I