I, however, kept my own counsel, waited and watched. The Parson also turned up a couple of days later and started gossip and tea-drinking in the hotel. But, of course, we posed as strangers to each other. The Igiea being the best hotel in Palermo and situated on the sea, the blue Mediterranean lapping the grey rocks at the end of the beautiful garden, it is the mode for people at other hotels to go there to tea, just as they go to the "Reserve," at Beaulieu, or the Star and Garter at Richmond. I therefore waited from day to day, expecting her to come there. Each day I pottered about in the car, but in vain. One morning, however, while passing in front of the cathedral, I saw her walking alone, and quickly seized the opportunity and overtook her. "Ah! Mademoiselle!" I exclaimed in French as I raised my cap in feigned surprise and descended from the car. "Fancy, you! In Palermo! And Madame, your aunt?" "She is quite well, thank you, Prince," she replied; and then, at my invitation, she got into the car and we ran round the town. I saw that she was very uneasy. The meeting was not altogether a pleasant surprise for her; that was very evident. "This place is more civilised than Tirnovo," I laughed. "Since then I expect that you, like myself, have been travelling a good deal." "Yes. We've been about quite a lot--to Vienna, Abbazia, Rome, and now to Palermo." "And not yet to London?" "Oh! yes. We were at home exactly eleven days. The weather was, however, so atrocious that Madame--my aunt, I mean--decided to come here. We are at the Excelsior. You are, of course, at the Igiea?" And so we ran along through the big, rather ugly, town, laughing and chatting affably. Dressed in a neat gown of dove-grey cloth, with hat to match and long white gloves, she looked extremely _chic_, full of that daintiness which was so essentially that of the true Parisienne. I told her nothing of my visit to Toddington Terrace, but presently I said: "I'll come to the Excelsior, and call on your aunt--if I may?" I noticed that she hesitated. She did not seem at all desirous to see me at their hotel. I, of course, knew the reason. The old lady was not Madame Demidoff in Palermo. "We will call and see you at the Igiea," she said. "We have never been there yet." "I shall be delighted," I answered her. "Only send me a note, in order that I may be in." Beyond the town we ran along beside the calm blue sea, with the high purple hills rising from across the bay. Bright and merry, she seemed quite her old self again--that sweet and charming self that I had first met in that rough, uncouth Bulgarian town. After an hour, we got out and seated ourselves on the rocks to rest. She was certainly not averse to a mild flirtation. Indeed--had she not already been engaged to Hausner, broken it off, and was now half engaged to the Marquis Torrini? She was nothing if not fickle.