Prince Pietro looked at her benevolently.

“Your father was right, you think?  Well, Angela mia, I think I had better be the first to own that your father was wrong!  The picture is already sold;—­that is if you consent to sell it!”

Angela turned very white.  “If I consent to sell it?  Sell it—­to whom?”

Sylvie put a caressing arm around her.  “Your father had the news this morning,” she said, “and we all decided to tell it to you as soon as we came back from the Consulate.  A wedding-surprise on our parts, Angela!  You know the picture was on view for the first time yesterday to some of the critics and experts in Rome?”

Angela made a faint sign of assent.  Her wistful eyes were full of wonder and anxiety.

“Well, among them was a purchaser for America—­Oh, you need not look at me, my dear!—­I have nothing to do with it!  You shall see the letter your father received—­and you shall decide; but the end of the whole matter is, Angela, that if you consent, the picture will be bought, not by any private purchaser, but by the American nation.”

“The American nation!” repeated Angela.  “Are you really, really sure of this?”

“Quite sure!” said Sylvie joyously.  “And you must say good-bye to it and let it go across the wide ocean—­out to the New World all alone with its grand and beautiful message,—­unless you go with it and show the Americans something even more perfect and beautiful in yourself than the picture!—­and you must be content to take twenty thousand pounds for it, and be acknowledged as the greatest painter of the age as well!  This will be hard work, Angela!—­but you must resign yourself!”

She laughed for pure delight in her friend’s triumph,—­but Angela turned at once to her father.

“Dearest father!” she said softly.  “I am glad—­for your sake!”

He folded her in his arms, too deeply moved to speak, and then as he felt her trembling, he led her to a chair and beckoned to Cyrillon Vergniaud who had stood apart, watching the little scene in silence.

“Come and talk to this dear girl!” he said.  “She is not at all a good hostess to-day!  She ought to entertain the bride and bridegroom here,—­but it seems as if she needed to be entertained herself!” And then, as Cyrillon obeyed him, and drew near the idol of his thoughts with such hesitating reverence as might befit a pilgrim approaching the shrine of a beloved saint, he turned away and was just about to speak to the Princesse D’Agramont when a servant entered and said hurriedly—­

“Monsignor Gherardi desires to see Cardinal Bonpre!”

There was a dead pause.  The group of friends looked at one another in embarrassment.  Angela rose from her chair trembling and glanced instinctively at her picture—­and for a moment no one seemed quite certain what should be done next.  The Princesse D’Agramont was the first to recover her self-possession.