How artless it was!  Yet my sympathy ebbed immediately.  Not my curiosity, however.  Perhaps at this or an earlier point I should have gone blushing away and forever pondered in secret the problem of Count Filgiatti’s intentions.  I confess that it didn’t even occur to me—­it was such a little Count and so far beyond the range of my emotions.  Instead, I smiled in a non-committal way and said that Count Filgiatti’s prudence was most unique.

“With a friend to previously discover then it is easy.  But perhaps the lady will have no friends in Italy.”

“You would have to be prepared for that,” I said.  “Certainly.”

“Also she perhaps quickly go away.  The Americans are so instantaneous.  Maybe my vision fade like—­like anything.”

“In a perspective of tourists’ coupons,” I suggested.

For a moment there was silence, through which we could hear the scrubbing-brush of the chambermaid on the marble hall of the first floor.  It seemed a final note of desolation.

“If I must speak of myself believe me it is not a nobody the Count Filgiatti,” he went on at last.  “Two Cardinals I have had in my family and one is second cousin to the Pope.”

“Fancy the Pope’s having relations!” I said, “but I suppose there is nothing to prevent it.”

“Nothing at all.  In my family I have had many ambassadors, but that was a little formerly.  Once a Filgiatti married with a Medici—­but these things are better for Mistra and Madame Wick to inquire.”

“Poppa is very much interested in antiquities, but I’m afraid there will hardly be time, Count Filgiatti.”

“Listen, I will say all!  Always they have been much too large, the families Filgiatti.  So now perhaps we are a little reduce.  But there is still somethings-ah—­signorina, can you pardon that I speak these things, but the time is so small—­there is fifteen hundred lire yearly revenue to my pocket.”

“About three hundred dollars,” I observed sympathetically.  Count Filgiatti nodded with the smile of a conscious capitalist.  “Then of course,” I said, “you won’t marry for money.”  I’m afraid this was a little unkind, but I was quite sure the Count would perceive no irony, and said it for my own amusement.

“Jamais! In Italy you will find that never!  The Italian gives always the heart before—­before——­”

“The arrangimento,” I suggested softly.

“Indeed, yes.  There is also the seat of the family.”

“The seat of the family,” I repeated.  “Oh—­the family seat.  Of course, being a Count, you have a castle.  They always go together.  I had forgotten.”

“A castle I cannot say, but for the country it is very well.  It is not amusing there, in Tuscany.  It is a little out of repairs.  Twice a year I go to see my mother and all those brothers and sisters—­it is enough!  And the Countess, my mother, has said to me two hundred times, ’Marry with an Americaine, Nicco—­it is my command.’  ‘Nicco,’ she calls me—­it is what you call jack-name.”