“They are certainly very intimate,” said Winterbourne.

Mrs. Costello inspected the young couple again with her optical instrument.  “He is very handsome.  One easily sees how it is.  She thinks him the most elegant man in the world, the finest gentleman.  She has never seen anything like him; he is better, even, than the courier.  It was the courier probably who introduced him; and if he succeeds in marrying the young lady, the courier will come in for a magnificent commission.”

“I don’t believe she thinks of marrying him,” said Winterbourne, “and I don’t believe he hopes to marry her.”

“You may be very sure she thinks of nothing.  She goes on from day to day, from hour to hour, as they did in the Golden Age.  I can imagine nothing more vulgar.  And at the same time,” added Mrs. Costello, “depend upon it that she may tell you any moment that she is ‘engaged.’”

“I think that is more than Giovanelli expects,” said Winterbourne.

“Who is Giovanelli?”

“The little Italian.  I have asked questions about him and learned something.  He is apparently a perfectly respectable little man.  I believe he is, in a small way, a cavaliere avvocato.  But he doesn’t move in what are called the first circles.  I think it is really not absolutely impossible that the courier introduced him.  He is evidently immensely charmed with Miss Miller.  If she thinks him the finest gentleman in the world, he, on his side, has never found himself in personal contact with such splendor, such opulence, such expensiveness as this young lady’s.  And then she must seem to him wonderfully pretty and interesting.  I rather doubt that he dreams of marrying her.  That must appear to him too impossible a piece of luck.  He has nothing but his handsome face to offer, and there is a substantial Mr. Miller in that mysterious land of dollars.  Giovanelli knows that he hasn’t a title to offer.  If he were only a count or a marchese!  He must wonder at his luck, at the way they have taken him up.”

“He accounts for it by his handsome face and thinks Miss Miller a young lady qui se passe ses fantaisies!” said Mrs. Costello.

“It is very true,” Winterbourne pursued, “that Daisy and her mamma have not yet risen to that stage of—­what shall I call it?—­of culture at which the idea of catching a count or a marchese begins.  I believe that they are intellectually incapable of that conception.”

“Ah! but the avvocato can’t believe it,” said Mrs. Costello.

Of the observation excited by Daisy’s “intrigue,” Winterbourne gathered that day at St. Peter’s sufficient evidence.  A dozen of the American colonists in Rome came to talk with Mrs. Costello, who sat on a little portable stool at the base of one of the great pilasters.  The vesper service was going forward in splendid chants and organ tones in the adjacent choir, and meanwhile, between Mrs. Costello and her friends, there was a great deal said about