“The box is but the guinea-stamp; the snuff’s the thing.—­Was it Shakespeare or Byron who said that?” enquired the Cardinal.

Beatrice laughed again.

“I think it must have been Pulcinella.  I’ll give you a lovely silver one, if you’ll accept it.”

“Will you?  Really?” asked the Cardinal, alert.

“Of course I will.  It’s a shame you haven’t one already.”

“What would a lovely silver one cost?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  It does n’t matter,” answered she.

“But approximately?  More or less?” he pursued.

“Oh, a couple of hundred lire, more or less, I daresay.”

“A couple of hundred lire?” He glanced up, alerter.  “Do you happen to have that amount of money on your person?”

Beatrice (the unwary woman) hunted for her pocket—­took out her purse—­computed its contents.

“Yes,” she innocently answered.

The Cardinal chuckled—­the satisfied chuckle of one whose unsuspected tactics have succeeded.

“Then give me the couple of hundred lire.”

He put forth his hand.

But Beatrice held back.

“What for?” she asked, suspicion waking.

“Oh, I shall have uses for it.”

His outstretched hand—­a slim old tapering, bony hand, in colour like dusky ivory—­closed peremptorily, in a dumb-show of receiving; and now, by the bye, you could not have failed to notice the big lucent amethyst, in its setting of elaborately-wrought pale gold, on the third finger.

“Come!  Give!” he insisted, imperative.

Rueful but resigned, Beatrice shook her head.

“You have caught me finely,” she sighed, and gave.

“You should n’t have jingled your purse—­you should n’t have flaunted your wealth in my face,” laughed the Cardinal, putting away the notes.  He took snuff again.  “I think I honestly earned that pinch,” he murmured.

“At any rate,” said Beatrice, laying what unction she could to her soul, “I am acquainted with a dignitary of the Church, who has lost a handsome silver snuffbox—­beautiful repousse work, with his arms engraved on the lid.”

“And I,” retaliated he, “I am acquainted with a broken-down old doctor and his wife, in Trastevere, who shall have meat and wine at dinner for the next two months—­at the expense of a niece of mine.  ‘I am so glad,’ as Alice of Wonderland says, ‘that you married into our family.’”

“Alice of Wonderland—?” doubted Beatrice.

The Cardinal waved his hand.

“Oh, if you prefer, Punch.  Everything in English is one or the other.”

Beatrice laughed.  “It was the I of which especially surprised my English ear,” she explained.

“I am your debtor for two hundred lire.  I cannot quarrel with you over a particle,” said he.

“But why,” asked she, “why did you give yourself such superfluous pains?  Why couldn’t you ask me for the money point-blank?  Why lure it from me, by trick and device?”