“Yes.”

Sabina turned her eyes a little, but did not look straight at him.  She saw, however, that he was still watching the people in the room, and still looked bored, and she was quite unprepared for what followed.

“Are the affairs of your family finally settled?” he enquired, without changing his tone.

Sabina was so much surprised that she waited a moment before answering.  Her first instinct was to ask him stiffly why he put such a question, and she would have replied to it in that way if it had come from any other guest in the room; but she changed her mind almost instantly.

“No one has told me anything,” she said simply, in a low voice.  Malipieri turned his head a little with a quick movement, and clasped his brown hands over one knee.

“You know nothing?” he asked.  “Nothing whatever about the matter?”

“Nothing.”

He bit his lip as if he were indignant, and were repressing an exclamation.

“No one has written to me—­for a long time,” Sabina said, after a moment.

She had been on the point of saying that she had never received a line from any member of her family since the crash, but that seemed to sound like a confidence, and what she really said was quite true.

“Has not the Senator told you anything either?” Malipieri asked.

“No.  I suppose he does not like to speak about our misfortunes before me.”

“Have you, I mean you yourself, any interest in the Palazzo Conti now?  Can you tell me that?”

“I know nothing—­nothing!” Sabina repeated the word with a slight tremor, for just then she felt her position more keenly than ever before.  “Why do you ask?”

She could not help putting the question which rose to her lips the second time, but there was no coldness in her voice.  She was very lonely, and she felt that Malipieri was speaking from some honourable motive.

“I am living in the palace,” Malipieri answered.

Sabina looked up quickly, with an expression of interest in her pale young face.  The thought that the man beside her was living in her old home was like a bond of acquaintance.

“Really?” she cried.  “In which part of the house?”

“Do not seem interested, please,” said Malipieri, suddenly looking very bored again.  “If you do, we shall not be allowed to talk.  I am living in the little apartment on the intermediate story.  They tell me that a chaplain once lived there.”

“I know where it is,” answered Sabina, “but I was never in the rooms.  They used to be shut up, I think.”

The deputy who was haranguing on the subject of divorce seemed to be approaching his peroration.  His great voice filled the large room with incessant noise, and everybody seemed anxiously waiting for a chance to contradict him.  Malipieri was in no danger of being overheard.

“If it happens,” he said, “that I wish to communicate with you on a matter of importance, how can I reach you best?”