“Yes, very odd.”  He paused and looked round the room to assure himself that no one else was present.  “There are two distinct stories about her.  The first is this.  They say that she is a South American prima donna, who sang only a few months, at Rio de Janeiro and then at Buenos Ayres.  An Italian who had gone out there and made a fortune married her from the stage.  In coming to Europe, he unfortunately fell overboard and she inherited all his money.  People say that she was the only person who witnessed the accident.  The man’s name was Aragno.  She twisted it once and made Aranjuez of it, and she turned it again and discovered that it spelled Aragona.  That is the first story.  It sounds well at all events.”

“Very,” said Sant’ Ilario, with a laugh.

“A profoundly interesting page in genealogy, if she happens to marry somebody,” observed Montevarchi, mentally noting all the facts.

“What is the other story?” asked Frangipani.

“The other story is much less concise and detailed.  According to this version, she is the daughter of a certain royal personage and of a Polish countess.  There is always a Polish countess in those stories!  She was never married.  The royal personage has had her educated in a convent and has sent her out into the wide world with a pretty fancy name of his own invention, plentifully supplied with money and regular documents referring to her union with the imaginary Aranjuez, and protected by a sort of body-guard of mutes and duennas who never appear in public.  She is of course to make a great match for herself, and has come to Rome to do it.  That is also a pretty tale.”

“More interesting than the other,” said Montevarchi.  “These side lights of genealogy, these stray rivulets of royal races, if I may so poetically call them, possess an absorbing interest for the student.  I will make a note of it.”

“Of course, I do not vouch for the truth of a single word in either story,” observed the young man.  “Of the two the first is the less improbable.  I have met her and talked to her and she is certainly not less than five and twenty years old.  She may be more.  In any case she is too old to have been just let out of a convent.”

“Perhaps she has been loose for some years,” observed Sant’ Ilario, speaking of her as though she were a dangerous wild animal.

“We should have heard of her,” objected the other.  “She has the sort of personality which is noticed anywhere and which makes itself felt.”

“Then you incline to the belief that she dropped the Signor Aragno quietly overboard in the neighbourhood of the equator?”

“The real story may be quite different from either of those I have told you.”

“And she is a friend of poor old Donna Tullia!” exclaimed Montevarchi regretfully.  “I am sorry for that.  For the sake of her history I could almost have gone to the length of making her acquaintance.”