“And you were sent to prison for that?” asked Sabina with indignation.

“It is one thing to send a man to prison,” said Malipieri.  “It is another to make him go there.  I escaped to Switzerland, and I came back to Italy quite lately, after the amnesty.”

“I am amazed!” The Baroness looked at the servants timidly, as if she expected the butler and the footman to express their disapprobation of the guest.

“I have left politics for the present,” Malipieri replied, looking at Sabina and smiling.

“Of course!” cried the Baroness.  “But—­” she stopped short.

“My wife,” said the financier with a grin, “is afraid you have dynamite about you.”

“How absurd!” The Baroness felt that she was ridiculous.  “But I do not understand how you can be friends,” she added, glancing from her husband to Malipieri.

“We are at least on good terms of acquaintance,” said the younger man a little markedly.

Sabina liked the speech and the way in which it was spoken.

“We have a common ground for it in our interest in antiquities.  Is it not true, Signer Malipieri?”

The Baron looked at him and smiled again, as if there were a secret between them, and Malipieri glanced at Sabina.

“It is quite true,” he said gravely.  “The Baron has read all I have written about Carthage.”

Volterra possessed a sort of rough social tact, together with the native astuteness and great knowledge of men which had made him rich and a Senator.  He suddenly became voluble and led the conversation in a new direction, which it followed till the end of dinner.

Several people came in afterwards, as often happened, before the coffee was taken away.  They were chiefly men in politics, and two of them brought their wives with them.  They were not the sort of guests whom the Baroness preferred, for they were not by any means all noble Romans, but they were of importance to her husband and she took great pains to make them welcome.  To one she offered his favourite liqueur, which happened to be a Sicilian ratafia; for another she made the Baron send for some of those horribly coarse black cigars known as Tuscans, which some Italians prefer to anything else; for a third, she ordered fresh coffee to be especially made.  She took endless trouble.

Malipieri seemed to know none of the guests, and he took advantage of the Baroness’s preoccupation for their comforts to sit down by Sabina.  He did not look at her, and she thought he looked bored, as he sat a moment in silence.  Then a thin deputy with a magnificent forehead and thick grey hair began to hold forth on the subject of a projected divorce law and the guests gathered round him.  Sabina had never heard of Sydney Smith, but she had a suspicion that nobody could be as great as the speaker looked.  While she was thinking of this, Malipieri spoke to her in a low voice.

“I suppose that you are stopping in the house,” he said.