keep his eyes from her, and followed wherever she led, penetrating into rooms where, in his delicate boyhood, he had never been allowed to go. “I know myself in every part,” cried Giovanna gayly. “I have all visited, all seen, even where it is not safe. It is safe here, M. Herbert. Come then and look at the carvings, all close; they are beautiful when you are near.” They followed her about within and without, as if she had been the cicerone, though they had all known Whiteladies long before she had; and even Reine’s nascent suspicions were not able to stand before her frank energy and cordial ignorant talk. For she was quite ignorant, and made no attempt to conceal it. “Me, I love not at all what is so old,” she said with a laugh. “I prefer the smooth wall and the big window, and a floor well frotté, that shines. Wood that is all cut like the lace, what good does that do? and brick, that is nothing, that is common. I love stone châteaux, with much of window, and little tourelles at the top. But if you love the wood, and the brick, très bien! I know myself in all the little corners,” said Giovanna. And outside and in, it was she who led the way. Once again--and it was a thing which had repeatedly happened before this, notwithstanding the terror and oppression of her presence--Miss Susan was even grateful to Giovanna, who left her free to make all her arrangements, and amused and interested the new-comers, who were strangers in a sense, though to them belonged the house and everything in it; and I doubt if it had yet entered into her head that Giovanna’s society or her beauty involved any danger to Herbert. She was older than Herbert; she was “not a lady;” she was an intruder and alien, and nothing to the young people, though she might amuse them for the moment. The only danger Miss Susan saw in her was one tragic and terrible danger to herself, which she had determined for the moment not to think of. For everybody else she was harmless. So at least Miss Susan, with an inadvertence natural to her preoccupied mind, thought.