“How the Del Ferice would rave if she could hear you call her poor old Donna Tullia,” observed Frangipani.  “I remember how she danced at the ball when I came of age!”

“That was a long time ago, Filippo,” said Montevarchi thoughtfully, “a very long time ago.  We were all young once, Filippo—­but Donna Tullia is really only fit to fill a glass case in a museum of natural history now.”

The remark was not original, and had been in circulation some time.  But the three men laughed a little and Montevarchi was much pleased by their appreciation.  He and Frangipani began to talk together, and Sant’ Ilario took up his paper again.  When the young diplomatist laid his own aside and went out, Giovanni followed him, and they left the club together.

“Have you any reason to believe that there is anything irregular about this Madame d’Aranjuez?” asked Sant’ Ilario.

“No.  Stories of that kind are generally inventions.  She has not been presented at Court—­but that means nothing here.  And there is a doubt about her nationality—­but no one has asked her directly about it.”

“May I ask who told you the stories?”

The young man’s face immediately lost all expression.

“Really—­I have quite forgotten,” he said.  “People have been talking about her.”

Sant’ Ilario justly concluded that his companion’s informant was a lady, and probably one in whom the diplomatist was interested.  Discretion is so rare that it can easily be traced to its causes.  Giovanni left the young man and walked away in the opposite direction, inwardly meditating a piece of diplomacy quite foreign to his nature.  He said to himself that he would watch the man in the world and that it would be easy to guess who the lady in question was.  It would have been clear to any one but himself that he was not likely to learn anything worth knowing, by his present mode of procedure.

“Gouache,” he said, entering the artist’s studio a quarter of an hour later, “do you know anything about Madame d’Aranjuez?”

“That is all I know,” Gouache answered, pointing to Maria Consuelo’s portrait which stood finished upon an easel before him, set in an old frame.  He had been touching it when Giovanni entered.  “That is all I know, and I do not know that thoroughly.  I wish I did.  She is a wonderful subject.”

Sant’ Ilario gazed at the picture in silence.

“Are her eyes really like these?” he asked at length.

“Much finer.”

“And her mouth?”

“Much larger,” answered Gouache with a smile.

“She is bad,” said Giovanni with conviction, and he thought of the Signor Aragno.

“Women are never bad,” observed Gouache with a thoughtful air.  “Some are less angelic than others.  You need only tell them all so to assure yourself of the fact.”

“I daresay.  What is this person?  French, Spanish—­South American?”

“I have not the least idea.  She is not French, at all events.”