Her luncheon was brought up on a tray by the waiter, and some for Martha also, and the two ate in silence, until Stella suddenly burst into a merry peal of laughter, it was so grotesquely comic!  A grown up English girl in these days locked in her room with a dragon duenna gaoler!

“Martha, isn’t it too funny, the whole thing!” she said, between her gurgles.  “Can’t you laugh, you old goose! and to think how sorry you will be, you were so horrid, when I am gone, because, of course, you know you cannot keep me once I make up my mind to go.”

“Mrs. Ebley said I was to have no conversation with you, Miss,” Martha said, glumly, at which Stella laughed afresh.

Meanwhile Count Roumovski had made all arrangements at the Excelsior Hotel, and after lunch sat quietly in the hall awaiting his beloved.  Mrs. Ebley had felt too upset to go down to the restaurant, so the two clergymen were there alone, and glanced wrathfully at the imperturbable face of Count Roumovski seated at his usual table, with his air of detached aloofness and perfect calm.  They, on the contrary, were so boiling with rage that they knew not what they ate.

After lunch it had been decided that the party should leave the Grand and take the five o’clock train to Florence, and their preparations were made.

Mrs. Ebley had herself been laboriously packing so as not to take Martha from her post, and orders were whispered to that faithful Abigail through Stella’s letter slide to pack Miss Rawson’s things at once.

Stella watched these preparations serenely, and gave Martha directions as to what to put on the top.  Then when all was finished and she had donned her hat, she rang the electric bell for the waiter, and when he knocked at the door she calmly bade him enter, which, of course, he was able to do with his key, and she told him in French, which Martha did not understand, to send the porters there immediately, and have her luggage consigned to the care of the servant who would be waiting in the passage.  This person would give orders for its destination.  The waiter bowed obsequiously.  Had he not been already heavily tipped by this intelligent Ivan, and instructed instantly to obey the orders of mademoiselle?”

“It is much better I am before them,” Stella thought to herself, while Martha looked on in rageful bafflement.

“The porters will come up and take the trunks outside, Martha,” Miss Rawson said.  “You can give them what orders aunt told you to.”

Such was her supreme confidence in the methods of her lover that she felt sure once Ivan was apprised of the fact by the waiter that the trunks would be consigned to him it would not matter what Martha said to the porters!  So she calmly sat down by the window and folded her hands, while the elderly maid fumed with the uncertainty of what she ought to do.  And in a few moments the men appeared, and smilingly seemed to understand the gestures and English orders of Martha to take the trunks to the door of Madam Ebley, number 325, round the corner of the passage and on the opposite side.