Peppino have given charge of the sale, has spies everywhere. You notice
an object, you are marked as a solid man, as they say in Germany. You
are noted. I shall be down on his list. I have been caught by him
enough. Ha! He is a very shrewd man! But come, I see the ladies. We
should have remembered that they were here," and smiling--but at whom?--
at Fossati, at himself or his companion?--he made the latter read the
notice hung on the door of a transversal room, which bore this
inscription: "Salon of marriage-chests."

There were, indeed, ranged along the walls about fifteen of those wooden
cases painted and carved, of those 'cassoni' in which it was the fashion,
in grand Italian families, to keep the trousseaux destined for the
brides. Those of the Castagnas proved, by their escutcheons, what
alliances the last of the grand-nephews of Urban VII, the actual Prince
d'Ardea, entered into. Three very elegant ladies were examining the
chests; in them Dorsenne recognized at once fair and delicate Alba Steno,
Madame Gorka, with her tall form, her fair hair, too, and her strong
English profile, and pretty Madame Maitland, with her olive complexion,
who did not seem to have inherited any more negro blood than just enough
to tint her delicate face. Florent Chapron, the painter's brother-in-
law, was the only man with those three ladies. Countess Steno and
Lincoln Maitland were not there, and one could hear the musical voice of
Alba spelling the heraldry carved on the coffers, formerly opened with
tender curiosity by young girls, laughing and dreaming by turns like her.

"Look, Maud," said she to Madame Gorka, "there is the oak of the Della
Rovere, and there the stars of the Altieri."

"And I have found the column of the Colonna," replied Maud Gorka.