h other in conversation she heard distinctly
what they said. Donna Tullia was of course aware of this.

"Do you?" she asked. "His father is a most estimable man--just a little
too estimable, if you understand! As for the boy--"

Donna Tullia moved, her broad shoulders expressively. It was a habit of
which even the irreproachable Del Ferice could not cure her. Corona's
face darkened.

"You can hardly call him a boy," observed Maria Consuelo with a smile.

"Ah well--I might have been his mother," Donna Tullia answered with a
contempt for the affectation of youth which she rarely showed. But
Corona began to understand that the conversation was meant for her ears,
and grew angry by degrees. Donna Tullia had indeed been near to marrying
Giovanni, and in that sense, too, she might have been Orsino's mother.

"I fancied you spoke rather disparagingly," said Maria Consuelo with a
certain degree of interest.

"I? No indeed. On the contrary, Don Orsino is a very fine fellow--but
thrown away, positively thrown away in his present surroundings. Of what
use is all this English education--but you are a stranger, Madame, you
cannot understand our Roman point of view."

"If you could explain it to me, I might, perhaps," suggested the other.

"Ah yes--if I could explain it! But I am far too ignorant myself--no,
ignorant is not the word--too prejudiced, perhaps, to make you see it
quite as it is. Perhaps I am a little too liberal, and the Saracinesca
are certainly far too conservative. They mistake education for progress.
Poor Don Orsino, I am sorry for him."

Donna Tullia found no other escape from the difficulty into which she
had thrown herself.

"I did not know that he was to be pitied," said Maria Consuelo.

"Oh, not he in particular, perhaps," answered the stout countess,
growing more and more vague. "They are all to be pitied, you know. What
is to become of young men brought up in that way? The club, the turf,
the card-table--to drink, to gamble, to bet, it is not an existence!"

"Do you mean that Don Orsino leads that sort of life?" inquired Maria
Consuelo indifferently.

Again Donna Tullia's heavy shoulders moved contemptuously.

"What else is there for him to do?"

"And his father? Did he not do likewise in his youth?"

"His father? Ah, he was different--before he married--full of life,
activity, originality!"

"And since his marriage?"

"He has become estimable, most estimable." The smile with which Donna