"Well," he responded slowly, "in an extremity, I should think that a
mere unlearned woman might, if she made an effort, ask the heretic to
dinner. I 'll come down and stay with you for a day or two, and you can
ask him to dinner."

"You're a perfect old darling," cried Beatrice, with rapture. "He'll
never be able to resist you."'

"Oh, I 'm not undertaking to discuss theology with him," said the
Cardinal. "But one must do something in exchange for a couple of hundred
lire--so I'll come and give you my moral support."

"You shall have your lovely silver snuffbox, all the same," said she.

Mark the predestination!

XVI

"CASTEL VENTIROSE,
"August 21 st.

"DEAR Mr. Marchdale: It will give me great pleasure if you can dine
with us on Thursday evening next, at eight o'clock, to meet my uncle,
Cardinal Udeschini, who is staying here for a few days.

"I have been re-reading 'A Man of Words.' I want you to tell me a great
deal more about your friend, the author.

Yours sincerely,
BEATRICE DI SANTANGIOLO."

It is astonishing, what men will prize, what men will treasure. Peter
Marchdale, for example, prizes, treasures, (and imagines that he will
always prize and treasure), the perfectly conventional, the perfectly
commonplace little document, of which the foregoing is a copy.

The original is written in rather a small, concentrated hand, not
overwhelmingly legible perhaps, but, as we say, "full of character," on
paper lightly blueish, in the prescribed corner of which a tiny ducal
coronet is embossed, above the initials "B. S." curiously interlaced in
a cypher.

When Peter received it, and (need I mention?) approached it to his face,
he fancied he could detect just a trace, just the faintest reminder, of
a perfume--something like an afterthought of orris. It was by no means
anodyne. It was a breath, a whisper, vague, elusive, hinting of things
exquisite, intimate of things intimately feminine, exquisitely personal.
I don't know how many times he repeated that manoeuvre of conveying the
letter to his face; but I do know that when I was privileged to inspect
it, a few months later, the only perfume it retained was an unmistakable
perfume of tobacco.

I don't know, either, how many times he read it, searched it, as if
secrets might lie perdu between th