"Don't be too long. I want to know what that old woman had been at. It's only some Scientific nonsense, I expect. Go on." "It's not Scientific this time. It's the other way round." Miss Upwell pricked up her ears. "I want to know, if there was a Duchess named Maddalena, what becomes of the theory that I christened the picture-ghost after you by subconscious cerebration?" "I see. Of course. I didn't see that." It had produced a visible impression. Madeline appeared to cogitate over it in an animated way, and then to mellow to a conclusion suddenly. "Well--but that proves it wasn't a dream at all, but a genuine phenomenon, and all sorts of things. I'm right, and you're wrong, and the picture was telling the truth all through. I knew she was." Her three hearers smiled from within the entrenchments of their maturity at the youthful enthusiasm of the speaker, and then said very correct things about this coincidence and that being really remarkable, and how we must not allow our judgments to be swayed by considerations, and must weigh everything deliberately, and accept everything else with caution, and hesitate about this, and pause before that, all with a view to avoiding heterodox conclusions. After which Mr. Pelly resumed: "'Then, as Attilio holds his hand a moment from filing, as one who awaits some issue before he may begin his labours afresh; and as my darling, whom alone I see--for I see nothing else--awaits it, too, I hear a step that halts, and then a door is pushed from without, and the step halts into the room, as some clocks tick. And it is then I begin to know of a great pain in my right hand. "'And here I may say to you, _Illustrissima_, that had this chanced but a few years later, this hand of mine that was my joy to use, the source and very life of all my skill, might even have been saved, and I might many times again have painted the dear face of my Maddalena. For what is there that is not possible to the skill of the great Francese Ambrogio?'" "This would be Ambrose Paré," said the reader, "who would have been about the same age as Cosimo dei Medici, the father of the lady to whom this is written..." But he resumed abruptly, in obedience to a shade of impatience in Madeline: "'Yet have I not been altogether disabled. For do I not write this with my left hand? I am, however, but an _egoista_--a selfish person--to dwell on this; though I know your Excellency will pardon this fault in an old man. "'I hear, then, the halting step approach. And both await the words that will follow it in silence. It is the old Marta Zan. "'_Sta tranquillo--sta tranquillo per bene_!' He is quiet--he is quiet for good! Her voice has a little laugh in it. It is not a sweet laugh to hear.