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Imperia Starling assuredly had not been boasting when she had described her residence in Beverly Hills as a bungalow. It proved to be larger than many a pretentious Italian villa and generally speaking had been conceived in the style of the Tuscan renaissance, although there were indications that the architect had flirted with the Spanish, the Tudor, and the early American. The grey stucco structure, while it rose to no great height, sprawled over an immense amount of land and contained, to be exact, twenty-seven rooms. It was situated on a hill that might have been a mountain, surmounting a series of terraces, the ultimate one paved with irregular flagstones. The leisurely approach from the road below was accomplished by means of a long winding drive, sheltered and shadowed by palm, pepper, and eucalyptus trees. Parallel with the façade a row of orange trees in green tubs had been arranged.

It was hither that Imperia Starling escorted Ambrose Deacon in her Hispano Suiza after an astonishing welcome at the surprisingly tawdry station in which whistling sirens, floral pieces, fluttering hand-