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was it?
    And then her disappointment was added to by a feeling of distaste.
    Not the Count? Oh, no, not Paul di Rini! Who had become so much involved with Arlette that she had disappeared for some reason. Cathleen was beginning to be quite certain of that.
    “You look concerned,” Moroc said, looking across the table at her with slightly narrowed eyes. “Is something wrong? Are you worried lest the identity of your unknown admirer should displease you when you eventually discover it?”
    And for a moment there was something mocking and embarrassing in his eyes.
    “Oh, no, no!” she exclaimed, wondering why it was that at one moment she felt at ease with him, and the next he either did or said something that could have indicated that he was actually making fun of her. “As a matter of fact,” she confessed, “I don’t believe the roses were for me at all. I think there was a mistake.”
    “Yet were they not addressed to Miss Cathleen Brown?” he stated rather than asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Well then, I think you can take it that the roses were for you.” He dismissed them from his mind and their conversation as if they were no longer of the slightest importance, and asked her once again what she proposed to do to while away that first free day of her holiday.
    “Because if you have no fixed plans I was wondering whether you would lunch with me, and then submit yourself to my expert guidance in the matter of sightseeing? And I presume, like all tourists, you do wish to do a certain amount of sightseeing?”
    His invitation took her aback again, and then pleasure showed in her face. She remembered the old-fashioned gondola he had unearthed from some boatman’s yard the evening before in order that she should do something she had always wished to do, and she decided that he was really kind. His eyes were smiling at her more whimsically, and he patted her hand as it rested on the table.
    “ Don’t look so surprised, my dear. You are charming, and I have nothing to do ... nothing that can’t wait, that is. When the urge to paint seizes hold of me I go to ground in such a complete fashion that you’ll find it difficult to unearth me, but for the moment the urge is not upon me. I am free to put myself at your disposal, and I shall be as disappointed as you will probably be when you find out who it was who sent you roses if you decline to make use of me. Now, as we shan’t get a better lunch anywhere than we will at the hotel I suggest that we have it there ... and before that I think you might be permitted to look at the inside of the cathedral. After that I will take you to Gino’s for an aperitif before lunch; and after lunch ...”
    It was such a comprehensive programme for the day that Cathleen wondered whether he had thought the whole thing out the night before, or whether he had grappled with the problem over b reakfast . She hadn’t the smallest wish to oppose any of the suggestions he made, and she was flattered by the amount of his time he was prepared to place at her disposal—for some reason she was certain that Bianca di Rini’s tight little smile would disappear altogether if she had any idea of the amount of time—and she thanked him gratefully for his interest, and for being, as she put it, ‘so very ki nd.’
    “You’ll find out later whether I’m kind,” he told her, smiling with a touch of quizzicalness. “Whether by nature I ’ m kind, I mean ... But somehow my own impression of myself has never included the application of that word. I could think of others ... but not kind!”
    She felt his hand beneath her elbow, and he helped her to her feet.
    “Now, you’ll find it very cool inside the cathedral. You won’t need to wear those dark glasses, either. I dislike dark glasses on an attractive young woman because they interpose a barrier between me and the changing expressions in her eyes!”
    Looked back upon afterwards, it was a highly successful day. Cathleen knew she had never lived