“And yours?” asked the Baroness, to see what she would say.

“I suppose it went to them too, like everything else, and to my mother, who spent a great deal of money.  At all events, none of us have anything now.  That is why I want to work.”

“It is an honourable impulse, no doubt,” the Baroness said, in a tone of meditative disapproval.

Sabina leaned forward, her chin on her hand.

“You think I am too young,” she said.  “And I really know nothing, except bad French and dancing.  I cannot even sew, at least, not very well, and I cannot cook.”  She laughed.  “I once made some very good toast,” she added thoughtfully.

“You must marry,” said the Baroness.  “You must make a good marriage.”

“No one will marry me, because I have no dowry,” answered Sabina with perfect simplicity.

“Some men marry girls who have none.  You are very pretty, you know.”

“So my mother used to tell me when she was in a good humour.  But Clementina always said I was hideous, that my eyes were like a little pig’s, quite inside my head, and that my hair was grey, like an old woman’s, and that I was as thin as a grasshopper.”

“You are very pretty,” the Baroness repeated with conviction; “and I am sure you would make a good wife.”

“I am afraid not!” Sabina laughed.  “We are none of us good, you know.  Why should I be?”

The Baroness disapproved.

“That is a flippant speech,” she said severely.

“I do not feel flippant at all.  I am very serious.  I wish to earn my living.”

“But you cannot—­”

“But I wish to,” answered Sabina, as if that settled the question.

“Have you always done what you wished?” asked the Baroness wisely.

“No, never.  That is why I mean to begin at once.  I am sure I can learn to be a maid, or to make hats, or feed babies with bottles.  Many girls of eighteen can.”

The Baroness shrugged her shoulders in a decidedly plebeian way.  Sabina’s talk seemed very silly to her, no doubt, but she felt slightly foolish herself just then.  At close quarters and in the relative intimacy that had grown up between them, the descendant of all the Conti had turned out to be very different from what the financier’s wife had expected, and it was not easy to understand her.  Sometimes the girl talked like a woman of the world, and sometimes like a child.  Her character seemed to be a compound of cynicism and simplicity, indifference and daring, gentleness, hardness and pride, all wonderfully amalgamated under a perfectly self-possessed manner, and pervaded by the most undeniable charm.  It was no wonder that the poor Baroness was as puzzled as a hen that has hatched a swan.