“Antiquaries can generally take care of themselves,” observed Orsino incredulously.

“Oh, I daresay—­but it looks so badly, you know.  That is all I mean.  When he saw me he stopped wrangling and we talked a little, while I had the embroidery wrapped up.  I will show it to you after dinner.  It is sixteenth century, Ugo says—­a piece of a chasuble—­exquisite flowers on claret-coloured satin, a perfect gem, so rare now that everything is imitated.  However, that is not the point.  It was Spicca.  I was forgetting my story.  He said the usual things, you know—­that he had heard that I was very gay this year, but that it seemed to agree with me, and so on.  And I asked him why he never came to see me, and as an inducement I told him of our great beauty here—­that is you, Consuelo, so please look delighted instead of frowning—­and I told him that she ought to hear him talk, because his face had frightened her so that she ran away when she saw him coming towards her in the street.  You see, if one flatters his cleverness he does not mind being called ugly—­or at least I thought not, until to-day.  But to my consternation he seemed angry, and he asked me almost savagely if it were true that the Countess d’Aranjuez—­that is what he called you, my dear—­really tried to avoid him in the street.  Then I laughed and said I was only joking, and he began to bargain again for the little brass frame and I went away.  When I last heard his voice he was insisting upon seventy-five centimes, and the antiquary was jeering at him and asking a franc and a half.  I wonder which got the better of the fight in the end.  I will ask him the next time I see him.”

Del Ferice supported his wife with a laugh at her story, but it was not very genuine.  He had unpleasant recollections of Spicca in earlier days, and his name recalled events which Ugo would willingly have forgotten.  Orsino smiled politely, but resented the way in which Donna Tullia spoke of his father’s old friend.  As for Maria Consuelo, she was a little pale, and looked tired.  But the countess was irrepressible, for she feared lest Orsino should go away and think her dull.

“Of course we all really like Spicca,” she said.  “Every one does.”

“I do, for my part,” said Orsino gravely.  “I have a great respect for him, for his own sake, and he is one of my father’s oldest friends.”

Maria Consuelo looked at him very suddenly, as though she were surprised by what he said.  She did not remember to have heard him mention the melancholy old duellist.  She seemed about to say something, but changed her mind.

“Yes,” said Ugo, turning the subject, “he is one of the old tribe that is dying out.  What types there were in those days, and how those who are alive have changed!  Do you remember, Tullia?  But of course you cannot, my angel, it was far before your time.”

One of Ugo’s favourite methods of pleasing his wife was to assert that she was too young to remember people who had indeed played a part as lately as after the death of her first husband.  It always soothed her.