Our little Margarita! Here was something to startle even steady old Roger. Only a few names in Italy are worthy to stand beside the splendid if impoverished House forced by pride to place its unwedded (because undowered) daughter in the convent that needs no _dot_. Obscure in financial realms alone, it required little search to put my finger on the epitaph of that brother of the cruel letter (a Cardinal before his death), on the father's pictured cruel face--he scorned to eat with the mushroom Romanoffs!--on the carved door-posts where Emperors had entered in the great Italian days, even on the gorgeous sculptured mantel-piece sold by Margarita's grandfather, an impetuous younger brother at the time of his mad marriage with an English beauty, whirled from the stage, whose brightest ornament contemporary record believed she was destined to become, had he not literally carried her, panting, from the scene of her first triumph. [Illustration: THE GLOOMY, FADED GLORIES OF THE MUSTY PALACE] Some idea of the relentless iron hands that tamed that brilliant, baffled creature--and hers was the only strain in Margarita that genius need be called on to vindicate!--I won from the old caretaker, a family retainer, who showed me, on a proper day, over the gloomy, faded glories of the musty palace. She was always heretic at heart, the old gossip mumbled, with furtive glances from my gold piece to the pictured lords above her, as if afraid they would revenge themselves for this tittle-tattle, heretic and light. A servant or a duke, a flower-seller or His Eminence, all was one to her crazy English notions. And the truth--how the mad creature told it! Blurted it out to everyone, so that they had to keep her shut up, finally. And would have her dogs about her--eating like Christians! And no money, when all was said. _Her children?_ Four sons, all dead now, and their souls with Christ--one, of the Sacred College. Never a generation without the red hat, thank God. No daughters. _Not so much as one?_ Why should there be? Some were spared daughters, when there was no money, and a blessing, too. _What figure had been cut from that group of four youths, cut so that a small hand that grasped a cup-and-ball showed plainly against one brother's sleeve?_ She did not know--how should she? Perhaps a cousin. It was painted by a famous Englishman and kept because it might bring money some day. _Then why cut it?_ How should she know? There were no daughters and the hour was up. Would the _signore_ follow her?