“Presently, if I may,” answered Giovanni.  “We are all fond of Gouache.  How did the accident happen?”

“Faustina ran over him,” said Flavia, fixing her dark eyes on Giovanni and allowing her pretty face to assume an expression of sympathy—­for the sufferer.  “Faustina and papa,” she added.

“Flavia!  How can you say such things!” exclaimed the princess, who spent a great part of her life in repressing her daughter’s manner of speech.

“Well, mamma—­it was the carriage of course.  But papa and Faustina were in it.  It is the same thing.”

Giovanni looked at Faustina, but her thin fresh face expressed nothing, nor did she show any intention of commenting on her sister’s explanation.  It was the first time he had seen her near enough to notice her, and his attention was arrested by something in her looks which surprised and interested him.  It was something almost impossible to describe, and yet so really present that it struck Sant’ Ilario at once, and found a place in his memory.  In the superstitions of the far north, as in the half material spiritualism of Polynesia, that look has a meaning and an interpretation.  With us, the interpretation is lost, but the instinctive persuasion that the thing itself is not wholly meaningless remains ineradicable.  We say, with a smile at our own credulity, “That man looks as though he had a story,” or, “That woman looks as though something odd might happen to her.”  It is an expression in the eyes, a delicate shade in the features, which speak of many things which we do not understand; things which, if they exist at all, we feel must be inevitable, fatal, and beyond human control.  Giovanni looked and was surprised, but Faustina said nothing.

“It was very good of the prince to bring him here,” remarked Sant’ Ilario.

“It was very unlike papa,” exclaimed Flavia, before her mother could answer.  “But very kind, of course, as you say,” she added, with a little smile.  Flavia had a habit of making rather startling remarks, and of then adding something in explanation or comment, before her hearers had recovered breath.  The addition did not always mend matters very much.

“Do not interrupt me, Flavia,” said her mother, severely.

“I beg your pardon, were you speaking, mamma?” asked the young girl, innocently.

Giovanni was not amused by Flavia’s manners, and waited calmly for the princess to speak.

“Indeed,” said she, “there was nothing else to be done.  As we had run over the poor man—­”

“The carriage—­” suggested Flavia.  But her mother took no notice of her.

“The least we could do, of course, was to bring him here.  My husband would not have allowed him to be taken to the hospital.”

Flavia again fixed her eyes on Giovanni with a look of sympathy, which, however, did not convey any very profound belief in her father’s charitable intentions.

“I quite understand,” said Giovanni.  “And how has he been since you brought him here?  Is he in any danger?”