in the least, or I would not have been surprised now to see him lost
in admiration of the fair girl. I was close to him and could see his
face, and it had a new expression on it that I did not know. The
people were almost gone and the lights were being extinguished when De
Pretis came round the corner, looking for us. But I was astonished to
see him bow low to the foreigner and the young lady, and then stop and
enter into conversation with them. They spoke quite audibly, and it
was about a lesson that the young lady had missed. She spoke like a
Roman, but the old gentleman made himself understood in a series of
stiff phrases, which he fired out of his mouth like discharges of
musketry.

"Who are they?" whispered Nino to me, breathless with excitement and
trembling from head to foot. "Who are they, and how does the maestro
know them?"

"Eh, caro mio, what am I to know?" I answered indifferently. "They are
some foreigners, some pupil of De Pretis, and her father. How should I
know?"

"She is a Roman," said Nino between his teeth. "I have heard
foreigners talk. The old man is a foreigner, but she--she is Roman,"
he repeated with certainty.

"Eh," said I, "for my part she may be Chinese. The stars will not fall
on that account." You see, I thought he had seen her before, and I
wanted to exasperate him by my indifference so that he should tell me;
but he would not, and indeed I found out afterwards that he had
really never seen her before.