And meantime, in the icy rooms where her mother Ernesta, submissive and desolate, had lately died, the Contessina resumed her girlish life, showing herself calm, yet very firm in her passion, having vowed that she would belong to none but Dario, and that she would not belong to him until the day when a priest should have joined them together in God's holy name.
As it happened, some six months previously, Dario also had taken up his abode at the Boccanera palace in consequence of the death of his father and the catastrophe which had ruined him.

Prince Onofrio, after adopting Prada's advice and selling the Villa Montefiori to a financial company for ten million _lire_,* had, instead of prudently keeping his money in his pockets, succumbed to the fever of speculation which was consuming Rome.

He began to gamble, buying back his own land, and ending by losing everything in the formidable _krach_ which was swallowing up the wealth of the entire city.

Totally ruined, somewhat deeply in debt even, the Prince nevertheless continued to promenade the Corso, like the handsome, smiling, popular man he was, when he accidentally met his death through falling from his horse; and four months later his widow, the ever beautiful Flavia--who had managed to save a modern villa and a personal income of forty thousand _lire_* from the disaster--was remarried to a man of magnificent presence, her junior by some ten years.

This was a Swiss named Jules Laporte, originally a sergeant in the Papal Swiss Guard, then a traveller for a shady business in "relics," and finally Marchese Montefiore, having secured that title in securing his wife, thanks to a special brief of the Holy Father.