Orsino laughed.

“No.  That is the point at which existence is more likely to begin than to end.”

“How cynical you are!  I do not like that.  Tell me about Madame Del Ferice.”

“Very well.  To begin with, she is a relation of mine.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.  Of course that gives me a right to handle the whole dictionary of abuse against her.”

“Of course.  Are you going to do that?”

“No.  You would call me cynical.  I do not like you to call me by bad names, Madame.”

“I had an idea that men liked it,” observed Maria Consuelo gravely.

“One does not like to hear disagreeable truths.”

“Then it is the truth?  Go on.  You have forgotten what we were talking about.”

“Not at all Donna Tullia, my second, third or fourth cousin, was married once upon a time to a certain Mayer.”

“And left him.  How interesting!”

“No, Madame.  He left her—­very suddenly, I believe—­for another world.  Better or worse?  Who can say?  Considering his past life, worse, I suppose; but considering that he was not obliged to take Donna Tullia with him, decidedly better.”

“You certainly hate her.  Then she married Del Ferice.”

“Then she married Del Ferice—­before I was born.  She is fabulously old.  Mayer left her very rich, and without conditions.  Del Ferice was an impossible person.  My father nearly killed him in a duel once—­also before I was born.  I never knew what it was about.  Del Ferice was a spy, in the old days when spies got a living in a Rome—­”

“Ah!  I see it all now!” exclaimed Maria Consuelo.  “Del Ferice is white, and you are black.  Of course you hate each other.  You need not tell me any more.”

“How you take that for granted!”

“Is it not perfectly clear?  Do not talk to me of like and dislike when your dreadful parties have anything to do with either!  Besides, if I had any sympathy with either side it would be for the whites.  But the whole thing is absurd, complicated, mediaeval, feudal—­anything you like except sensible.  Your intolerance is—­intolerable.”

“True tolerance should tolerate even intolerance,” observed Orsino smartly.

“That sounds like one of the puzzles of pronunciation like ’in un piatto poco cupo poco pepe pisto cape,’” laughed Maria Consuelo.  “Tolerably tolerable tolerance tolerates tolerable tolerance intolerably—­”

“You speak Italian?” asked Orsino, surprised by her glib enunciation of the difficult sentence she had quoted.  “Why are we talking a foreign language?”

“I cannot really speak Italian.  I have an Italian maid, who speaks French.  But she taught me that puzzle.”

“It is odd—­your maid is a Piedmontese and you have a good accent.”

“Have I?  I am very glad.  But tell me, is it not absurd that you should hate these people as you do—­you cannot deny it—­merely because they are whites?”