last night, you know. I had such fun last time. I intrigué'd heaps of people, and Doggendorff I drove wild; I told him everything about his wife and Lelio Castelpucci, and all against himself that she'd ever told me. It was such fun—he'd not an idea who I was, for when we were at supper, he came running in breathless to tell us of a horrible little mask with a voice like a macaw's;—you know I'd put a pebble under my tongue."
"Very dangerous pastime, and a very vulgar one," said the Lady Hilda, descending the staircase. "How can you go down into that horrible screeching mob, Mila? It is so very low."
"My dear, I go anywhere to amuse myself, and Maurice was always near me, you know, so if I had been insulted——— There's eight o'clock striking."
The Hotel del Rè was but ten minutes' drive along the famous river-street, which has such an Arabian Nights-like beauty when the lamps are lighted, and gleam in long lines adown each shore, and mirror themselves in the water, whilst dome, and bell-tower, and palace-roof raise them-
