“You mean Donna Flavia, your sister, Mademoiselle?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you are very fond of her, are you not?  It must be very pleasant to have a sister so nearly of one’s own age in the world.”

“She is much older than I, but I think we shall be very good friends.”

“Your family must be almost as much strangers to you as the rest of the world,” observed Gouache.  “Of course you have only seen them occasionally for a long time past.  You are fond of reading, I see.”

He made this remark to change the subject, and glanced at the book the young girl still held in her hand.

“It is a new book,” she said, opening the volume at the title-page.  “It is Manon Lescaut.  Flavia has read it—­it is by the Abbe Prevost.  Do you know him?”

Gouache did not know whether to laugh or to look grave.

“Did your mother give it to you?” he asked.

“No, but she says that as it is by an abbe, she supposes it must be very moral.  It is true that it has not the imprimatur, but being by a priest it cannot possibly be on the Index.”

“I do not know,” replied Gouache, “Prevost was certainly in holy orders, but I do not know him, as he died rather more than a hundred years ago.  You see the book is not new.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Donna Faustina, “I thought it was.  Why do you laugh?  Am I very ignorant not to know all about it?”

“No, indeed.  Only, you will pardon me, Mademoiselle, if I offer a suggestion.  You see I am French and know a little about these matters.  You will permit me?”

Faustina opened her brown eyes very wide, and nodded gravely.

“If I were you, I would not read that book yet.  You are too young.”

“You seem to forget that I am eighteen years old, Monsieur Gouache.”

“No, not at all.  But five and twenty is a better age to read such books.  Believe me,” he added seriously, “that story is not meant for you.”

Faustina looked at him for a few seconds and then laid the volume on the table, pushing it away from her with a puzzled air.  Gouache was inwardly much amused at the idea of finding himself the moral preceptor of a young girl he scarcely knew, in the house of her parents, who passed for the most strait-laced of their kind.  A feeling of deep resentment against Flavia, however, began to rise beneath his first sensation of surprise.

“What are books for?” asked Donna Faustina, with a little sigh.  “The good ones are dreadfully dull, and it is wrong to read the amusing ones—­until one is married.  I wonder why?”

Gouache did not find any immediate answer and might have been seriously embarrassed had not Giovanni Sant’ Ilario come up just then.  Gouache rose to relinquish his seat to the newcomer, and as he passed before the table deftly turned over the book with his finger so that the title should not be visible.  It jarred disagreeably on his sensibilities to think that Giovanni might see a copy of Manon Lescaut lying by the elbow of Donna Faustina Montevarchi.  Sant’ Ilario did not see the action and probably would not have noticed it if he had.