“You know now why I want to see Del Ferice,” he said.  “I cannot go to his house.  My only chance of talking to him lies here.”

“And that is what brings you?  You are very flattering!”

“Do not be unjust!  We all look forward to meeting our friends in heaven.”

“Very pretty.  I forgive you.  But I am afraid that you will not meet Del Ferice.  I do not think he has left the Chambers yet.  There was to be a debate this afternoon in which he had to speak.”

“Does he make speeches?”

“Very good ones.  I have heard him.”

“I have never been inside the Chambers,” observed Orsino.

“You are not very patriotic.  You might go there and ask for Del Ferice.  You could see him without going to his house—­without compromising your dignity.”

“Why do you laugh?”

“Because it all seems to me so absurd.  You know that you are perfectly free to go and see him when and where you will.  There is nothing to prevent you.  He is the one man of all others whose advice you need.  He has an unexceptional position in the world—­no doubt he has done strange things, but so have dozens of people whom you know—­his present reputation is excellent, I say.  And yet, because some twenty years ago, when you were a child, he held one opinion and your father held another, you are interdicted from crossing his threshold!  If you can shake hands with him here, you can take his hand in his own house.  Is not that true?”

“Theoretically, I daresay, but not in practice.  You see it yourself.  You have chosen one side from the first, and all the people on the other side know it.  As a foreigner, you are not bound to either, and you can know everybody in time, if you please.  Society is not so prejudiced as to object to that.  But because you begin with the Del Ferice in a very uncompromising way, it would take a long time for you to know the Montevarchi, for instance.”

“Who told you that I was a foreigner?” asked Maria Consuelo, rather abruptly.

“You yourself—­”

“That is good authority!” She laughed.  “I do not remember—­ah! because I do not speak Italian?  You mean that?  One may forget one’s own language, or for that matter one may never have learned it.”

“Are you Italian, then, Madame?” asked Orsino, surprised that she should lead the conversation so directly to a point which he had supposed must be reached by a series of tactful approaches.

“Who knows?  I am sure I do not.  My father was Italian.  Does that constitute nationality?”

“Yes.  But the woman takes the nationality of her husband, I believe,” said Orsino, anxious to hear more.

“Ah yes—­poor Aranjuez!” Maria Consuelo’s voice suddenly took that sleepy tone which Orsino had heard more than once.  Her eyelids drooped a little and she lazily opened and shut her hand, and spread out the fingers and looked at them.

But Orsino was not satisfied to let the conversation drop at this point, and after a moment’s pause he put a decisive question.