s all, broken finally by Imperia. "A
little honesty might clear the atmosphere," she said to Raphael;
"besides what need is there of such secrecy when we have all guessed the
truth. No, you shall not escort me to Magliana. I will be no man's
second choice, not even yours, Agostino," and so saying she ungraciously
departed from us.

"She is in a devil of a humour," Chigi said to me, uneasily, when
Raphael had bidden us good-night. "What can have angered her? Is it
possible that she suspects that her reign is over?"

"She suspects nothing," I assured him, truthfully; in my heart I added,
"but she knows everything."

"But will she go?" Chigi asked, anxiously; "that is the immediate
question. I cannot put her out by force."

"You will never have to do that," I replied. "She will go, never fear.
Leave her to herself, her mood will have changed by morning. There is
only one thing to be relied upon in women, and that is their
inconstancy, not alone to men but to any fixed idea."

In spite of the flippancy with which I had striven to beguile Chigi, I
was vaguely but none the less genuinely troubled. Unable to sleep, I
strolled toward dawn in the garden. A lamp burned in the tiny room
assigned to Margherita, and to my surprise there flitted across the
window the shadow of Imperia. What business could she have there at such
an hour? Certain expressions, to which I had given no weight at the time
of their utterance, came back to me with sinister significance, and
especially her declaration that Margherita must disappear, "not for one
day, but for ever." I continued my watch until a gust of rain drove me
into the house, and I fell asleep to dream that an oubliette lined with
the blades of scythes (such as I knew existed in certain old Roman
houses) had at Imperia's touch yawned beneath the couch of Margherita;
and that the innocent barrier to Raphael's reconciliation with Maria had
indeed "dropped from his life."

But I awoke at Chigi's cheery halloo to find that the storms of the
previous evening had cleared. Imperia had expressed her readiness to
spend the day at Magliana, and my host desired me to select horses for
the excursion.

I never saw her gayer than on that day, and when I looked askance as she
jested with his Holiness and flirted with Riario, daring him to give a
supper in her honour in his new palace, she pressed my foot beneath the
table and looked me smilingly in the face, as though striving to assure
me tha