Trescorre had one of his characteristic pauses.

"That the Duke of Monte Alloro is in failing health--and that her
Highness's year of widowhood ended yesterday."

There was a silence. Odo, who had reseated himself, rose and walked to
the window. The shutters stood open and he looked out over the formless
obscurity of the gardens. Above the intervening masses of foliage the
Borromini wing raised its vague grey bulk. He saw lights in Maria
Clementina's apartments and wondered if she still waked. An hour or two
earlier she had given him her hand in the contra-dance at the state
ball. It was her first public appearance since the late Duke's death,
and with the laying off of her weeds she had regained something of her
former brilliancy. At the moment he had hardly observed her: she had
seemed a mere inanimate part of the pageant of which he formed the
throbbing centre. But now the sense of her nearness pressed upon him.
She seemed close to him, ingrown with his fate; and with the curious
duality of vision that belongs to such moments he beheld her again as
she had first shone on him--the imperious child whom he had angered by
stroking her spaniel, the radiant girl who had welcomed him on his
return to Pianura. Trescorre's voice aroused him.

"At any moment," the minister was saying, "her Highness may fall heir to
Monte Alloro. It is the moment for which Austria waits. There is always
an Archduke ready--and her Highness is still a young woman."

Odo turned slowly from the window. "I have told you that this is
impossible," he murmured.

Trescorre looked down and thoughtfully fingered the documents in his
hands.

"Your Highness," said he, "is as well-acquainted as your ministers with
the difficulties that beset us. Monte Alloro is one of the richest
states in Italy. It is a pity to alienate such revenues from Pianura."

The new Duke was silent. His minister's words were merely the audible
expression of his own thoughts. He knew that the future welfare of
Pianura depended on the annexation of Monte Alloro. He owed it to his
people to unite the two sovereignties.

At length he said: "You are building on an unwarrantable assumption."

Trescorre raised an interrogative glance.

"You assume her Highness's consent."

The minister again paused; and his pause seemed to flash an ironical
light on the poverty of the other's defences.

"I come straight from her Highness," said he quietly, "and I assume
nothing that I am not