"I am glad I told you. I was feeling--rather queer. What am I to do? Am I to go back to the villa as if nothing had happened, or--what?" "'What' might mean coming to my hotel, but you seemed to find my society a bore." "That's unkind. It was your own fault that I went to a different hotel at Châtelard." "How do you make that out?" "I can't tell you. I don't suppose you'll ever know. But if you should guess, by-and-bye, remembering something you once said, you might understand." "Something I once said----" "Never mind. Please don't talk of it. I'd rather be shot at. But I want you to believe that my reason wasn't the one you thought. Now, tell me what you're going to do about Signor di Nivoli. Have you made a plan?" "One has popped into my head," I replied. "It mayn't answer, but will you give me _carte blanche_ to try? If it doesn't work, I'll get you out of the mess in another way. But this would give us a chance of making Paolo eat humble pie." "Do try it, then. I'd risk a lot for that." "As for to-night, on the whole I think the best thing will be for you to go back to the villa. Of course we mustn't let the Contessa suspect----" "Little cat! I wouldn't give her the satisfaction." "Upon my word, you're not very gallant." "I don't care. I'm sick of the Contessa. A plague upon her, and all her houses. Yet, I wish her nothing worse than that she should marry Paolo. Ugh! A man with his hair _en brosse_!" "Probably he is saying, 'Ugh! a boy with curls on his collar.'" "May one of his old balloons fly away with him, before he shoots me. Anyhow, he shall find that curls don't make a coward. Only--there's just one thing before you treat with him. I won't--I _can't_--be jabbed at with anything sharp." "You shan't," said I. With this, the Contessa beckoned from a distance, with news that she was going home. We followed, the Boy and I, allowing her to walk far ahead, with her triumphant aëronaut, the Baron and Baronessa, radiant with satisfaction in the success of their plot, arm in arm between the two couples. Having seen my little Daniel to the gate of the Lions' Den, I shook hands cordially with everybody, Paolo last of all. He placed his fingers with haughty reluctance in my ostentatiously proffered palm, but I held the four chilly, fish-like things (chilly only for me) long enough to mutter, _sotto voce_: "I want a word with you on a matter of importance. I'll walk up and down the road for twenty minutes." His impulse was to refuse, I could see by the sharp upward toss of his chin. But a certain quality in my look, clearly visible to him in the light of the gate lamp (I was at some pains to produce the effect), warned him that if his bloodthirsty plans were not to be nipped in the red bud, he must bend his will to mine in this one instance. He answered with a glance, and I knew that I should not be kept long on my beat. CHAPTER XXII An American Custom