“I think it was very good of you to come,” she said at last, when she was comfortably settled.

“I wish goodness were always so easy,” answered Orsino with alacrity.

“Is it your ambition to be good?” asked Maria Consuelo with a smile.

“It should be.  But it is not a career.”

“Then you do not believe in Saints?”

“Not until they are canonised and made articles of belief—­unless you are one, Madame.”

“I have thought of trying it,” answered Maria Consuelo, calmly.  “Saintship is a career, even in society, whatever you may say to the contrary.  It has attractions, after all.”

“Not equal to those of the other side.  Every one admits that.  The majority is evidently in favour of sin, and if we are to believe in modern institutions, we must believe that majorities are right.”

“Then the hero is always wrong, for he is the enthusiastic individual who is always for facing odds, and if no one disagrees with him he is very unhappy.  Yet there are heroes—­”

“Where?” asked Orsino.  “The heroes people talk of ride bronze horses on inaccessible pedestals.  When the bell rings for a revolution they are all knocked down and new ones are set up in their places—­also executed by the best artists—­and the old ones are cast into cannon to knock to pieces the ideas they invented.  That is called history.”

“You take a cheerful and encouraging view of the world’s history, Don Orsino.”

“The world is made for us, and we must accept it.  But we may criticise it.  There is nothing to the contrary in the contract.”

“In the social contract?  Are you going to talk to me about Jean-Jacques?”

“Have you read him, Madame?”

“‘No woman who respects herself—­’” began Maria Consuelo, quoting the famous preface.

“I see that you have,” said Orsino, with a laugh.  “I have not.”

“Nor I.”

To Orsino’s surprise, Madame d’Aranjuez blushed.  He could not have told why he was pleased, nor why her change of colour seemed so unexpected.

“Speaking of history,” he said, after a very slight pause, “why did you thank me yesterday for having got you a card?”

“Did you not speak to Gouache about it?”

“I said something—­I forget what.  Did he manage it?”

“Of course.  I had his wife’s place.  She could not go.  Do you dislike being thanked for your good offices?  Are you so modest as that?”

“Not in the least, but I hate misunderstandings, though I will get all the credit I can for what I have not done, like other people.  When I saw that you knew the Del Ferice, I thought that perhaps she had been exerting herself.”

“Why do you hate her so?” asked Maria Consuelo.

“I do not hate her.  She does not exist—­that is all.”

“Why does she not exist, as you call it?  She is a very good-natured woman.  Tell me the truth.  Everybody hates her—­I saw that by the way they bowed to her while we were waiting—­why?  There must be a reason.  Is she a—­an incorrect person?”