“It was his wife’s ticket, I believe,” said Maria Consuelo.  “She could not come.  I am here on false pretences.”  She smiled carelessly.

Donna Tullia lost herself in speculation, but failed to solve the problem.

“You have chosen a most favourable moment for your first visit to Rome,” she remarked at last.

“Yes.  I am always fortunate.  I believe I have seen everything worth seeing ever since I was a little girl.”

“She is somebody,” thought Donna Tullia.  “Probably the wife of a diplomatist, though.  Those people see everything, and talk of nothing but what they have seen.”

“This is historic,” she said aloud.  “You will have a chance of contemplating the Romans in their glory.  Colonna and Orsini marching side by side, and old Saracinesca in all his magnificence.  He is eighty-two year old.”

“Saracinesca?” repeated Maria Consuelo, turning her tawny eyes upon her neighbour.

“Yes.  The father of Sant’ Ilario—­grandfather of that young fellow who showed you to your seat.”

“Don Orsino?  Yes, I know him slightly.”

Corona, sitting immediately behind them heard her son’s name.  As the two ladies turned towards each 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.