One of the things Tarsis learned in the United States was that child labour in factories is a superior device for fattening stock dividends. Mario Forza, from his place in the National Parliament, once denounced him in a speech rebuking the Government for lack of interest in the toiling masses. The bodily health and moral being of thousands of children were ruined every year in Italy, he said, that men like Tarsis might pile up their absurd fortunes--an outburst that brought loud and long applause from the seats of the New Democrats. This speech was green in the memory of Tarsis that night on the riverside when he thanked Forza for the service rendered his promised wife. A situation created by the want of money had brought Hera and Tarsis together. He had some cold-blooded reasons for wanting the beautiful patrician for his wife. She ministered to his sense of beauty, but it was the principle of success she typified that gave her greatest value in his eyes. The man of peasant blood looked to an alliance with the house of Barbiondi as the crowning triumph of his career. Hera was the fairest prize of the Lombard aristocracy. Men of noble blood and large fortune had failed to win her hand, because she could not rid herself of the conviction that to become the wife of a man for the sake of his fortune would be a mere bartering of her charms. Against such a step her whole being rose in revolt. Tarsis had conceived the thought to possess her and had planned to do so as he had planned to gain control of the Mediterranean Steamship Line. His faithful ally was Donna Beatrice, Hera’s aunt, who strove mightily in the cause. But it was Hera’s love for her father--her wish to relieve him from the torments of poverty--that made it possible for Tarsis to attain his purpose. The sands of the Barbiondi were almost run. Their villa, built two centuries before Napoleon appeared on that side of the Alps, was all that remained of an estate once the largest in the North. Charts of old days show its forests and hillside fields bordering the river Adda from Lake Lecco in the mountains clear to the Bridge of Lodi. Like his forebears of many generations, Don Riccardo had seen the money-lenders swallow his substance. If in his own time the bites were of necessity small, they were none the less frequent. To Donna Beatrice’s skill in concealing the actual state of their purse was due the fact that the Barbiondi were able to spend a part of the winter in Milan, so that Hera, whom her aunt recognised as the family’s last asset, might be in evidence to the fashionable world. How she accomplished this never ceased to be a riddle to her brother; and he gave it up, as he gave up all riddles. His idea of a master stroke in contrivance was to go to his banker and arrange another mortgage. He was likely to go shooting or for a ride when there was a financial crisis to be met. It was at the moment that the mortgagee’s