The scheme seemed to me likely to succeed, and one morning, when I shrewdly suspected that Raphael would be busied at the Vatican, I took Imperia with me to his studio to try her powers of persuasion upon Margherita. Even then she could not have succeeded but for my help, for Margherita, trusting in my friendship for Raphael, appealed to me. "It is for his good," I assured her. "Then I will not refuse," she replied, "but will go with you at once. So write for me to my master that if he wishes to paint from me, he will find me when he is prepared to fulfil his promises to his patron." Thus, without giving her time to reflect, we carried Margherita in Imperia's carriage to Chigi's villa. I guessed that she had no intention of sending the girl's message to her lover; that she planned to keep Margherita hidden until Raphael, believing her false or losing all hope of finding her, would return to his allegiance to Maria. But there were other forces at work on which I had not counted, and the first of these was Chigi. Something like the same chain of reasoning had been started in his mind by my mention of Margherita, but he had reached the conclusion that Raphael's infatuation for his pretty model must be encouraged. He therefore privately requested me to induce her, by exactly the same arguments which we had already employed, to do precisely what she had already done. The humour of the situation was so great that I burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. This so angered the unsuspecting man that I managed to ejaculate between my paroxysms: "Margherita in this villa! And what pray you would the Signora Imperia say to that?" At this question Chigi whistled. "I had forgotten Imperia," he admitted, and then to my utter confusion that lady entered the room with her arm about the waist of Margherita. Never before had I seen Imperia unable to give a plausible account of a situation, but while she hesitated, Margherita did her good service by telling the simple truth. She thanked Chigi warmly for his patronage of Raphael, and explained how Imperia and she had plotted to induce him to complete the frescoes. "And you did this to give me pleasure?" Chigi asked, regarding Imperia with wonder and admiration. She felt her advantage and found her tongue. "You little know your Imperia," she said, sweetly; and true though the words were he understood them falsely, as she meant he should, and the recording angel gave her credit for a lie. "I am more grateful than I can express," cried Chigi, "for I have great need of Raphael at this moment, and you, dearest Imperia, shall never regret this kindness." "We have played into the hands of the enemy," Imperia said to me in a low voice as Chigi darted away to write to Raphael; "nevertheless the game is not yet lost. I know my dear Agostino's cards, and though they are good ones I have some which he recks not of and he shall never wed the fair Maria."