Suddenly, however, Regina's eyes sparkled and returned to the world about her. "Why shouldn't _you_ be Madame's confidential agent?" she said; "her secretary? I remember what I dreamed the first night I saw her at Arduina's--that she was dead and had left us her money!" "It would be easy enough," said Antonio. "To get the money?" "No--the administration of her affairs. True, one would have to flatter and cringe, and take people in, especially as she employs two or three others in addition to the Cavaliere. One would have to intrigue against them all. I don't care for that sort of business." "Nor I," said Regina, stiffening. She rose and moved to the window which overlooked the garden. Antonio followed her. The night was warm and voluptuous. The scent of laurel rose ever sweeter and stronger; patches of yellow light were spread over the little garden paths like a carpet. Regina looked down, then raised her eyes towards the darkened blue of the heavens and sighed, stifling the sigh in a yawn. "After all," said Antonio, pursuing his own line of thought, "are we not happy? What do we lack?" "Nothing and everything!" "What is lacking to us, I say?" repeated Antonio, questioning himself rather than his wife; "what do you mean by your 'everything'?" "Do you see the Bear?" she asked, looking up, and pretending not to have heard this question. He looked also. "No, I don't----" "Then we do lack something! We can't see the stars." "What do you want with the stars? Leave them where they are, for they're quite useless! If there were anything you really wanted you wouldn't be crying for the stars." "Then you think I am lacking in----?" She touched her forehead. "So it seems!" "Perhaps the deficiency is in you," she said quickly. "Now you're insulting me, and I'll take you and pitch you out of the window!" he jested, seizing her waist. "If my wits are deficient, it's because you're making me lose them with your folly!" CHAPTER VII She was not guilty of folly in action, but certainly her words became stranger and stranger. Antonio sometimes found them amusing; more often they distressed him. Though seemingly calm, Regina could not hide that she was under the dominion of a fixed idea. What was she thinking about? Even when he held her in his arms, wrapped in his tenderest embrace, Antonio felt her far, immeasurably far, away from him. In the brilliant yet drowsy spring mornings while the young pair still lay in the big white bed, Antonio would repeat his questions to himself: "What do we lack! Are we not happy?"