moment think of any adequate reason to account for his coming.

'Yes?' Her eyes studied him with what appeared at once a cool and an
amused scrutiny. He felt himself growing red beneath it.

'Can I do anything for you?' she prompted with the kind of desire of
putting him at his ease.

'Thank you----' He grasped at the first idea that presented itself. 'I'm
stopping at the Hotel du Lac, and Gustavo, you know, told me there was a
villa somewhere around here that belongs to Prince Someone or Other. If
you ring at the gate and give the gardener two francs and a visiting
card, he will let you walk around and look at the trees.'

'I see!' said the girl, 'and so now you are looking for the gate?' Her
tone suggested that she suspected him of trying to avoid both it and the
two francs. 'Prince Sartorio-Crevelli's villa is about half a mile
farther on.'

'Ah, thank you,' he bowed a second time, and then added out of the
desperate need of saying something, 'There's a cedar of Lebanon in it and
an india-rubber plant from South America.'

'Indeed!'

She continued to observe him with polite interest, though she made no
move to carry on the conversation.

'You--are an American?' he asked at length.

'Oh, yes,' she agreed easily. 'Gustavo knows that.'

He shifted his weight.

'I am an American too,' he observed.

'Really?' The girl leaned forward and examined him more closely, an
innocent, candid, wholly detached look in her eyes. 'From your appearance
I should have said you were German--most of the foreigners who visit
Valedolmo are German.'

'Well, I'm not,' he said shortly. 'I'm American.'

'It is a pity my father is not at home,' she returned, '_he_ enjoys
meeting Americans.'

A gleam of anger replaced the embarrassment in the young man's eyes. He
glanced about for a dignified means of escape; they had him pretty well
penned in. Unless he wished to reclimb the wall--and he did not--he must
go by the terrace, which retreat was cut off by the washer-women, or by
the parapet, already occupied by the girl in white and the washing. He
turned abruptly and his elbow brushed a stocking to the ground.

He stooped to pick it up and then he blushed still a shade deeper.

'This is washing day,' observed the girl with a note of apology. She rose
to her feet and stood on the top of the parapet while she beckoned to
Giuseppe, then she turned and looked down upon the young man with an
expression of frank amusement. 'I hope yo