She made no answer, and Bertino went on building airy mansions of the golden harvest to follow the sale of the sculpture then under way as well as that to be reaped from other marbles to be turned out of Armando’s far-off workshop. His words affected Juno in a manner that he little kenned. She had given herself only a fugitive thought as to what might happen when the bust should arrive and Bertino should find it an image of his own wife instead of the wife of the President of the United States. When the critical moment came, when the fruit of her roguery stood unveiled, she felt that she should be equal to it--that she could shrug her shoulders and meet Bertino’s suspicions with a simple plea of ignorance, and trust to his believing that he himself sent the wrong photograph by mistake. Now she perceived that it behooved her to keep friends with him, to guile him with affection, else his suspicion when he should discover the fraud might take the cast of sullen conviction, and in Mulberry who can tell what a husband may do with a false wife, whatever the shade of her duplicity may be? Moreover, she wanted the bust. Her rude self-conceit thirsted for that effigy in stone of her own dear self. To lose it would be to miss the prize on which she had set her desire when she said “Yes” that day in the Caffè of the Beautiful Sicilian. “Ah, yes,” she replied when they stood on the Elevated platform. “We shall put your uncle in a sack and get along well together when the bust is here.” “_Brava_, my wife!” said Bertino, and they entered the train. * * * * * Next day being the Feast of Sunday, Bertino and his uncle met at the noon repast in Casa Di Bello, as they had done every Sunday since Carolina’s absence. The grocer was in jubilant spirits, unable to contain his joy over the finding of Juno. “Ah, nephew mine,” he said, when Angelica had set a large bowl of steaming chestnut soup on the board and retired to her listening place. “Not many days, _caro mio_, and we shall have a fine woman at table with us. Yes, a woman truly magnificent.” “Who is she?” “The woman who is to be my wife. I told you once. Can you not divine?” “No.” “Well, I will tell you, though it is a great secret: Juno the Superb.” A spoonful of soup that Bertino was in the act of swallowing took the wrong course and choked him, while Angelica was thrown from her balance at the head of the kitchen stairs and almost fell to the bottom. When Bertino had stopped coughing he gasped: “Juno the Superb?” “Yes. Is it not famous?” “Your wife?” “Yes. Ah, what joy!” “But it is impossible!”