"It may be just a coincidence," I demurred, though in truth I was deeply interested. "And he's been here six months. He must have heard of your engagement before--or at least been aware that Sebastian knew you." "Perhaps," admitted Alicia, pacing up and down like a substantial sunbeam. "But that doesn't satisfy me. There's only one way to settle the question. I've got to have a private talk with that man." "But how?" I gasped. "You've got to arrange it," replied Peaches firmly. "Impossible!" I squeaked. "What an idea! Though, of course, you could meet him secretly in the garden!" "The very thing!" exclaimed my charge with enthusiasm. "Here--I will write a note and date him up, and you will see that it gets to him. I'll meet him in the rose garden at midnight to-morrow." She sat herself down at the exquisite old Moorish escritoire and taking pen and paper wrote in her labored, painstaking fashion, her head on one side, her tongue firmly between her teeth, the hair curling at the nape of her neck like that of an innocent child rather than a desperate maiden in a most thrilling situation. "There!" she said at length, slipping the missive into an envelope and handing it to me. "There you are, Free. Now be sure he gets it, and let me know how he acts. It doesn't need any answer!" With which she actually had the impudence to kiss me gayly on the cheek and run away to bed, leaving me standing as if paralyzed, the note in one hand, and the problem of handling the preposterous situation staring me in the face. My dear father used to say that only those who must be ashamed need be afraid, and as this matter of the note was really none of my personal affair I need not, I suppose, have feared for the consequences; and yet I confess that I was filled with fear. The day had been interminable, and now it seemed that it was not yet over, though the clock pointed to a quarter after twelve. At such a circumstantial hour I had no mind to venture out into a corridor in which I had recently encountered a very fair imitation of a ghost. Indeed, there had been from the start of our acquaintance something very mysterious about the Duke di Monteventi, and death, it seemed, did not offer any solution, but rather extended the obscurity which surrounded him. It was my personal opinion that he was dead, and that this valet creature who had startled us in such a fashion merely bore an accidental resemblance to Sandro. Yet then again it was so much more romantic to consider his being resurrected as a possibility. But if it were Sandro, why on earth should he, who had the entrée to every fashionable house in Europe, reappear in the capacity of a servant?