y the charge.

The Countess at once wrote a formal note to Princess Anatolie in which
she said that she had been hasty and spoken too soon, that her daughter
seemed undecided, and that nothing was to be said at present about
breaking the engagement. The marriage, she added, would be put off until
the autumn.

The Princess showed this communication to Monsieur Leroy when he came
in. He did not mean to tell her about his visit to the lawyer, for he
had made up his mind to play on her credulity as much as he could and to
attribute any advantage she might gain by his manoeuvres to
supernatural intervention. The Countess's letter surprised him very
much, and as he did not know what to do, it seemed easy to do nothing.
He expressed his disgust at Cecilia's vacillation.

"She is a flirt and her mother is a fool," he said, and the speech
seemed to him pithy and concise.

The old Princess raised her aristocratic eyebrows a little. She would
have expressed the same idea more delicately. There was a vulgar streak
in his character that often jarred on her, but she said nothing, for she
was inexplicably fond of him. For her own part, she was glad that
Cecilia had apparently changed her mind again.

Later in the day she received a few words from Guido, written in an
unsteady hand, to say that he was sorry he could not come and see her as
he had a bad attack of influenza. At the word she dropped the note as if
it burnt her fingers, and called Monsieur Leroy, for she believed that
influenza could be communicated in almost any way, and it was the only
disease she really feared: she had a presentiment that she was to die of
it.

"Take that thing away, Doudou!" she cried nervously. "Pick it up with
the tongs and burn it. He has the influenza! I am sure I have caught
it!"

Monsieur Leroy obeyed, while she retired to her own room to spend half
an hour in those various measures of disinfection which prophylactic
medicine has recently taught timid people. She had caused her maid to
telephone to Guido not to send any more notes until he was quite well.

"You must not go near him for a week, Doudou," she said when she came
back at last, feeling herself comparatively safe. "But you may ask how
he is by telephone every morning. I do not believe there can be any
danger in that."

Electricity was a mysterious power after all, and seemed infinitely
harder to understand than the ways of the supernatural beings with whom
Monsieur Leroy pla