"I'm so glad, so very glad you've called, dear," Carmenilla said enthusiastically. "Father mentioned the other day that you were in England, and I've wondered so often why you've never been to see us." "I've been staying with friends in the country," Gemma explained. "I suppose you speak English quite well now." "A little. But oh! it is so difficult," she laughed. "And it is so different here to Firenze or Rome. The people are so strange." "Yes," Gemma sighed. "I have also found it so." In their girlhood days they had been close friends through five years at the grey old convent of San Paolo della Croce in the Via della Chiesa at Firenze, and afterwards at Rome, where Carmenilla had lived with a rather eccentric old aunt, the Marchesa Tassino, while her father had been absent fulfilling the post of Ambassador at Vienna. "I'm so very glad you've called," Castellani's daughter repeated. "Come to my room; take off your things and stay to luncheon. Father is out, and I'm quite alone." "The Count is out," repeated her visitor in a feigned tone of regret. Truth to tell, however, it was intelligence most welcome to her. "I'm sorry he's not at home. We haven't met for so long." "Oh, he's dreadfully worried just now!" his daughter answered. "The work at this Embassy is terrible. He seems writing and interviewing people from morning until night. He works much harder now than any of the staff; while at Brussels it was all so different. He had absolutely nothing to do." "But this England is such a great and wonderful country, while Belgium is such a tiny one," Gemma observed. "The whole diplomatic world revolves around London." "Yes, of course," she resumed. "But to sustain Italy's prestige we are compelled to do such lots of entertaining. I'm terribly sick of it all. The situation in Rome began to change almost as soon as father was appointed here, and now it has become extremely grave and critical. The men who were once his friends are now his bitterest foes. He has adjusted several most difficult matters recently, but no single word of commendation has he received from the Marquis Montelupo." "Perhaps the Marquis is not his friend," Gemma hazarded, for the purpose of ascertaining the extent of her knowledge. "No. He is his enemy; of that I'm absolutely confident," the girl replied. "I hate him. He's never straightforward. Once, in Rome, he tried to worm from me a secret of my father's, and because I would not speak he has never forgiven me." "Was it some very deep secret?" Gemma inquired. "Yes. It concerned the prestige of Italy and my father's reputation for probity," she replied. "Why the King trusts him so implicitly, I can never understand." "If there are serious political complications in Rome, as you seem to think, then the days of his power are numbered," observed her visitor, now master of herself again. "The Ministry will be thrown out."