"I have been taught to call myself Barbara," was her answer, which Paul could not but think was a somewhat odd way of expressing herself.
Barbara! If he had not thought it a pretty name before, he certainly thought it such now.
"And Barbara," he murmured, more to himself than to his companion, "means 'strange.'"
"I fear you will find my character correspondent."
"But you have a second name?" smiled Paul.
"Presumably, but I am in ignorance respecting it, for my parentage is unknown to me. Indeed, signor, it is true," she added sadly. "I am a mystery to myself."
Her statement filled Paul with wonder, but though desirous of learning her history he recognized that the time was scarcely yet ripe to press for confidences.
The path traversed by them formed a gradual descent, in parts so steep that Barbara would often have slipped but for Paul's strong arm. The murmur of the sea was now heard; a faint breeze blew coldly; finally emerging from the wood, they found themselves on an open grassy space shelving down to the beach.
There, distant about a hundred yards, stood the building that they sought—Castel Nuovo.
The retention of the epithet "Nuovo" was perhaps intended as a joke on the part of the Dalmatians. Like the rest of earthly things the castle must once have been new, but that once, judging by appearances, was a long time ago. The greater part of the edifice was in ruins, the stars glimmering through the vacant window spaces and through the gaps that yawned in the ivy-mantled walls.