by C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

“ The woman of mystery had visited us both, only she had gone to Shelagh first and had not been scared away, because Shelagh hadn't thoroughly waked up.
We decided that our vision was no ghost, but that, for once, rumor was right. In some amazing way a strange woman had concealed herself in the rambling old Abbey—the house has several secret rooms of which we know, and there might be others, long forgotten—and possibly she had been carrying on signaling of some sort until warned of danger by that visit from the police. ”

“ Since she had had him Miss Paget had done her very best to spoil the poor animal, encouraging him to growl at the men-servants, and laughing when he frightened away any male creature who had come about the place. While she and Jack were arguing over money and motors, who should stroll in but Beau, who at sight of a stranger—a man—closeted with his indulgent mistress, flew into a rage. He seized Jack by the trouser-leg and began to worry it, and Jack had to choke him before the dog would let go his grip. ”

“ The scheme I have in my head for you to launch Fane on the social sea—the sea in every sense of the word, as you'll learn by and by—can't come off till you're out of your deepest mourning. I'll find you a quieter line of goods than the Fane-Leigh business to begin on, if you agree to take up brightening. ”

“ I felt suddenly rather curious about the person struck by a “double blow,” for a “fellow feeling makes one wondrous kind;” and at that moment I was a sort of modern, female Damocles myself. In fact, I had got the Marchese d'Ardini to bring me away from the ballroom to hide in this secret arbor of his old Roman garden because my mood was out of tune for dancing. I hadn't wanted to come, but grandmother had insisted. ”

“ A brightener need not confine herself to female society, as a mere companion must. A young woman, even though a widow and a princess, could not “companion” a person of the opposite sex, even if he were a hundred. But she might, from a discreet distance, be his brightener. That is, she might brighten a lonely man's life without tarnishing her own reputation.
“After all,' Mrs. Carstairs went on, “in spite of what's said against him, man is a fellow being. If a cat may look at a king, man may look at a princess. ”

“ You must stave off the smash, That's your business. Then Elizabeth will marry a title with money or an American millionaire or some one, and prevent it from ever coming.”
This thrilled me, and I felt like a Joan of Arc out to save her family, not by capturing a foe, but a husband.
Mr. Carstairs did stave off the smash, Heaven or its opposite alone knows how; and grandmother spent about half a future millionaire husband's possible income in taking a town house with a train of servants, renting a Rolls-Royce, and buying for us both the most divine clothes imaginable. ”

“ She had had another dog, given her by Jack, which died, and she collected Beau herself. Only a few days after Beau's arrival, Jack went down into the country to see his aunt and talk things over; for she had brought him up to expect to be her heir; and as she wanted him with her continually, as if he had been her son, she had objected to his taking up any profession. Now that he 'd lost his own money in this unfortunate speculation, he felt he ought to do something not to be dependent upon her, his income of two hundred a year having been sunk with the unfloatable motor invention. ”

“ The ghost of a “nice English young lady” was preferable in her opinion to a military spy in the flesh! I agreed, but I was not keen on seeing either. My nerves were jumpy. Consequently I lay awake, hour after hour, though Shelagh was in grandmother's room, adjoining mine, with the door open between.
When I did sleep I must have slept heavily. I dreamed that I was a prisoner on a submarine and that signals from Courtenaye Abbey flashed straight into my face. ”

“ You must have known perfectly well—ever since that night at Avignon when you let your hair down, anyhow, if not before, that I was trying desperately hard not to be an idiot about you—and not exactly radiant with joy in the thought that whoever the man was who would get you, it could n't be I? ”

“ Carstairs' moment to say: “I told you so! If only you had let the Abbey when I advised you that it was best, all would have been well. Now, with the central hall in ruins, nobody would be found dead in the place!” But being a particularly kind man, he said nothing of the sort. He merely implored grandmother to live economically in Rome; and, of course, being grandmother, she did nothing of the sort. ”

“ My whole inheritance from my husband-of-an-hour could be packed into a suit case! Shelagh and her snobs traveled with us. And as soon as they were demobilized, Roger Fane and James Courtenaye followed, if not us, at least in our direction.
I don't think that Aladdin's lamp builders “had anything on” Sir Jim, as he himself said, judging by the way the restorations simply flew. From what I heard of the sums he spent, it would take the shillings of all England and America as sightseers to reimburse him for his output. But, as Mr. Carstairs pointed out, that was his business! ”

“ He was waiting for me in the couriers' room, which was even dingier and had more grease spots than I had fancied, and I hurried into speech to cover my nervousness.
"I don't know how I 'm going to thank you for all you 've done for me," I stammered. "That horrible Bertie ⸺"
"Let's not talk of him," said Jack. "Put him out of your mind for ever. He has no place there, or in your life—and no more have any of the incidents that led up to him. You 've had a very bad time of it, poor little girl, and now ⸺"
"Oh, I haven't," I exclaimed. "I 've been happier than ever before in my life. ”

“ Tears were running down her fat face (not so fat as it had been) under spectacles, and her false front was put on anyhow.
"Oh, my dear girl!" she wailed, without showing the slightest sign of astonishment at sight of me. "What a mercy you 've turned up, but it 's just like you. ”

“ All I thought of was my intense desire to hear what those two would say next.
“Like grandmother, like granddaughter, I suppose,” went on the ex-cowboy baronet, James Courtenaye. “A hard-hearted lot, my only surviving female relatives seem to be! Her husband at the front liable to die at any minute, her grandmother dying at home, and our fair young princess dancing at a ball.” ”

“ In America, we don't grow early Victorian buds. You know perfectly well that those detestable snobs, the Pollens, don't think Fane good enough for Shelagh, in spite of his money. Money's the one nice thing they've got themselves which they can pass on to Shelagh. ”

“ Just as I 'd told about the brooch, and Bertie's threat, and was coming to his punishment, another knock at the door produced the two young men, both pale, but Jack with a noble pallor, while Bertie's was the sick paleness of pain and shame.
"I 've brought him to apologize to Miss d'Angely, in your presence, Sir Samuel, and Lady Turnour's," said the chauffeur. "I see you know something of the story."
"They know all now," said I. For Bertie's face proved the truth of my words, if they had needed proof. His eyes were swimming in tears, and he looked like a whipped school-boy. ”

“ The principal things I know how to do are to look pretty and to be nice to people, so that when people are with me they feel purry and pleasant. With this stock in trade I had a perfectly gorgeous time in life until Fate stuck a finger into my mechanism and upset the working of my pendulum. ”

“ Carstairs' comment on that.
“I've felt ever since that awful spooky night at the Abbey that I had it in me to make a good detective,” I modestly explained.
“'Princess di Miramare, Private Detective,' would be a distinctly original signboard over an office door,” the old lady reflected. “But I believe I've evolved something more practical, considering your name and your age—twenty-one, isn't it?—and your looks. Not that detective talents mayn't come in handy even in the profession I'm going to suggest. Very likely they will, among other things. ”

“ We 'll have to part company," said Sir Samuel. "As for Elise here ⸺"
"She 'll have to go too," broke in her ladyship. "It 's most inconvenient, and all your stepson's fault—though she 's far from blameless, in my humble opinion, whatever yours may be. Don't tell me that a young man will go about flirting with lady's maids unless they encourage him!"
"I shall leave of course, immediately," said I, my ears tingling.
"Who wants you to do anything else? Though nobody cares for my convenience. I can always go to the wall. But thank heaven there are maids in Paris as well as chauffeurs. ”

“ But everything was against him on that visit to his aunt's country house.
In the first place, she was in a very bad humour with him, because he had gone against her wishes, and she did n't want to hear anything more about motors or motor business. Then, there was Beau, as a tertium quid. Beau had been bought from a dreadful man who had probably stolen, and certainly ill-treated him. The dog was very young, and owing to his late owner's cruelty, feared and hated the sight of a man. ”

“ Shelagh and I knew nothing until Barl came pounding at my door. Then the stinging of our nostrils and eyelids was a fire alarm!
It's wonderful how quickly you can do things when you have to! Ten minutes later I was running as fast as I could go to the village, and might have earned a prize for a two-mile sprint if I hadn't raced alone. By the time the fire engines reached the Abbey, it was too late to save a whole side of the glorious old “linen fold” paneling of the hall. ”

“ Carstairs decided to see grandmother in person.
It was when she received his telegram that she decided I must accept Prince Miramare. She had wanted an Englishman for me; but a prince is a prince; and though Paolo was far from rich at the moment, he had the prospect of an immediate million——lire, alas, not pounds. An enormously rich Greek offered him that sum for the fourteenth-century Castello di Miramare on a mountain all its own, some miles from Rome. ”

“ It 's only as her friend that I have acted in her defence, as any decent man has a right to act when a lady is insulted."
Then Bertie apologized, in a dull voice, with his eyes on the ground, and mumbled a kind of confession, mixed with self-justification. ”

“ Carstairs calmed me. “I haven't finished the whole proposition yet. In America when we run up a skyscraper we don't begin at the bottom in any old, commonplace way. We stick a few steel girders into the earth ”

“ Grandmother is dead. And—Paolo?”
“His plane crashed. It was instant death—not painful. Alas, the telegram came to your hotel, and the signora, your grandmother, opened it. Her maid found it in her hand. The brave spirit had fled! Mr. Carstairs, her solicitor, and his kind American wife came here at once. How fortunate was the business which brought him to Rome just now, looking after your interest! A search party was after me, while I was seeking a mere ice! And now the Carstairs wait to take you to your hotel. ”

“ CHAPTER I. IWONDER who will tell her,” I heard somebody say, just outside the arbor.
The somebody was a woman, and the somebody else who answered was a man,
“Glad it won't be me,” he replied ungrammatically.
I didn't know who these somebodies were, and I didn't much care. For the first instant, the one thing I did care about was that they should remain outside the arbor, to which I had retreated, instead of finding their way in. Then the next words waked my interest. They sounded mysterious, and I loved mysteries—then. ”

“ You must tell me!"
"I thought it was the beautiful lady who was with you the first time you saw the battlement garden at Beaucaire, who ruined your life?"
"Beautiful lady—battlement garden? Good heavens, what extraordinary things we seem to have been thinking about each other: I with my man in England ”

“ Unless somebody takes that trouble off its hands, it stays stopped. Whereas, if a girl or a young, able-bodied woman runs down—that is, comes suddenly to the end of everything, including resources—she mayn't give up ticking for a single second. ”

“ From time to time she replenished the household equipment from supplies which were on hand at the Abbey. Grandmother wasn't a woman to be conquered by shortages! On one occasion she remembered a hundred yards of bargain stuff she'd bought to be used for new dust covers at the Abbey, and as all the servants but two were discharged when we left for town, the sheets had never been made up. ”