“I should be most delighted to have you for a neighbor, under my roof, in any case. I’m sure you know that. Oh, yes, I’m grateful to you. You might have cut me! I know it. But you’ve taken a broad view. You’ve allowed for the heart—though not for the imagination, for the certainties that lie beyond probability. Besides all that—which I feel deeply—by taking that floor you relieve me of a little difficulty.” “I’m glad to hear it. How’s that?” “Since I came here, I have naturally paid some visits among my old friends. You smile! Oh, yes, I’m human enough to like congratulations. Some of them are people of rank, as you know—you used to chaff me about my grandees! Their names appear in the papers—those society paragraphs—the Paris editions of American papers—Oh, my Lord! My name appeared—an item—‘Don Arsenio Valdez has returned to Palazzo Valdez!” He rose, went to the big bureau, and came back with a telegram. “Received to-day,” he added, as he put it into my hands. I read it, looked across at him, and laughed. It was what I had expected; the only surprise was that Godfrey had taken rather long to track them. Scruples still obstinate, perhaps! “So he wants to take an apartment in your _palazzo_, does he?” “I’ve been under some obligations to him; it would be difficult to refuse. We’re good friends, but—I didn’t want him here. It wouldn’t be—convenient.” Now he was looking furtive and rather embarrassed, as if he were uncertain how much truth and how much lie he had better administer to me. “I saw him in Paris,” I remarked, “the other day, and from what he said it seemed that he’d made very good friends both with you and with your wife.” He smiled; having no such shame as ordinary mortals have, he accepted exposure easily. He relapsed into the truth quite gracefully. “I don’t know how the devil Lucinda feels about him,” he confessed. “I wish he wouldn’t come at all, but I can’t help that. At all events he needn’t be in the house with us now!” “Have you any reason to suppose she doesn’t like him?” I asked. His restlessness returned, and with it his dreary look. He got up and began to wander about the long room, fingering furniture and ornaments, then drifting back to me at the window, and the next moment away again. Suddenly, from the other end of the room, he came out with, “What have they told between them? Godfrey at Paris, and Lucinda here to-day?” “Well, pretty nearly everything, I fancy. If you mean the money and Nina Dundrannan, and so forth. He described that meeting at Cimiez, for example.” “Yes, they’ve told you everything—everything that matters. Well, what do you think?” “If we’re to be friends, I’d sooner not offer an opinion.” He flashed out at me. “There’s your code—your damned code! Didn’t I learn it in England? Didn’t I have it literally drubbed into me—thrashed into me—at school? And you keep it even when you love a woman!” “H’m! Not always in that case, I’m afraid, Arsenio.”