Angela did not much care whether people in Rome knew the truth or not.
That no longer greatly mattered to her, because she meant never, never to
go back to Rome, or to see Paolo di Sereno, or any of his friends--who had
never really been her friends. But she did not want people on the ship to
know, because she was tired of being talked about, and her hope was to
begin a new and different life. For herself, she had nothing to conceal;
but, she had never felt any pride or pleasure in being a princess, and
after the flatteries and disillusions, the miseries and foolish
extravagances of the last hateful, brilliant six years, everything
connected with them, and the historic title her dead father's money had
bought, was being eagerly obliterated by Franklin Merriam's daughter. She
knew little about her forebears on her father's side, except that they
were English, whereas Paolo had centuries behind him crammed full of
glorious ancestors whose deeds were celebrated on tapestries of great
beauty and value. Her one tolerable memory of Paolo was that he had never
touched her hand since their marriage; but the memory of her father was
sacred. She adored him, and was never weary of recalling things he had
said to her, pleasures he had planned for her as a child, and, above all,
his stories of California, whither she was now bound.

Angela had taken the name of "Mrs. May"; May, because May was her
birth-month, and also her middle name given by her father, whereas Angela
had been her mother's choice. Therefore she was just superstitious enough
to feel that "May" might bring happiness, since her father's memory was
the single unshadowed spot in her life of twenty-three years. A brilliant
life it would have seemed to most women, one to be envied; but Angela
could not see why.

The lashes which shaded her slate-gray eyes had that upward curl which
shows an undying sense of humour, and she had been a merry little girl,