"Doesn't it make you shy asking for money?" asked Regina, astonished. "Why should I be shy? Every one does it. It's not for myself I ask--it's for the journal, which is doing terribly badly. I've asked for a subscription and an audience of the Queen. And to-morrow I must go to my uncle the Senator and learn----" "I'd sooner die than beg from anybody!" said Regina. "But why?" asked the other, astounded. "What harm does it do? If you were a literary woman, and ran a paper and had an idea to sustain and to make triumphant----" "Spare us--my dear goose!" interrupted Antonio. "And hold my tongue, I suppose? So you never ask for money? Nor take advantage of anything useful which comes in your way? Why do you stare, Regina? It's all a question of getting used to it." "Getting used to it? That's another matter." Regina felt a flood of contemptuous words rise to her lips, but she kept silence, thinking she would not deign even to reply. She walked to the window and saw the little black-dressed woman with the seven lemons, in the corner by the shut door; but she no longer felt the melancholy this sight had waked in her on her first coming to Rome. _She had got used to it._ "The Princess often asks for you," said Arduina, "won't you come to her next reception? Now you've found a house and are getting settled, you can begin to return visits and make acquaintances." "What good are acquaintances to me?" "What good are they to others? Don't be posing as an oddity," said Antonio, a little sharply. "Shall I have enough drawing-room to receive them in?" returned Regina in that cold voice of hers which froze her husband's heart. He was dismayed and silent. Arduina, however, did not understand. "Your drawing-room will be small," she said, "that means you can't have a large circle. But you'd better come to the Princess's. It's in your husband's interest." "No. I don't know what to make of your princesses," said Regina; but immediately she repented, remembering her vows of a few minutes before. She laughed, joked, turned everything upside down in the little drawing-room, and promised to go with Arduina to see the Senator uncle. "I'll tell him I'm a poetess, and ask him to get me an audience of the Queen," she said gaily. "My dear child, capital!" cried Arduina in ecstasy. "Yes! yes! we'll go together!" But Regina made a roguish gesture, moving her hand like a fan with her thumb on the point of her nose; and the other laughed, more than ever sure that her sister-in-law was half imbecile. Next day they went together to the distinguished uncle, who turned out only a second cousin of Arduina's mother. The authoress had dressed herself up. She wore a black dress much wrinkled on the shoulders, a yellow straw hat trimmed with poppies; a feather boa so thin and worn that people turned their heads to look at it. Regina, also in black, with her inevitable lace scarf, seemed beside her almost a beauty.