Mark the predestination!




XVI


"CASTEL VENTIROSE,
"August 21 st.

"DEAR Mr. Marchdale: It will give me great pleasure if you can
dine with us on Thursday evening next, at eight o'clock, to
meet my uncle, Cardinal Udeschini, who is staying here for a
few days.

"I have been re-reading 'A Man of Words.' I want you to tell
me a great deal more about your friend, the author.

Yours sincerely,
BEATRICE DI SANTANGIOLO."

It is astonishing, what men will prize, what men will treasure.
Peter Marchdale, for example, prizes, treasures, (and imagines
that he will always prize and treasure), the perfectly
conventional, the perfectly commonplace little document, of
which the foregoing is a copy.

The original is written in rather a small, concentrated hand,