"Do you?" she asked. "His father is a most estimable man--just a little
too estimable, if you understand! As for the boy--"

Donna Tullia moved, her broad shoulders expressively. It was a habit of
which even the irreproachable Del Ferice could not cure her. Corona's
face darkened.

"You can hardly call him a boy," observed Maria Consuelo with a smile.

"Ah well--I might have been his mother," Donna Tullia answered with a
contempt for the affectation of youth which she rarely showed. But
Corona began to understand that the conversation was meant for her ears,
and grew angry by degrees. Donna Tullia had indeed been near to marrying
Giovanni, and in that sense, too, she might have been Orsino's mother.

"I fancied you spoke rather disparagingly," said Maria Consuelo with a
certain degree of interest.

"I? No indeed. On the contrary, Don Orsino is a very fine fellow--but
thrown away, positively thrown away in his present surroundings. Of what
use is all this English education--but you are a stranger, Madame, you
cannot understand our Roman point of view."

"If you could explain it to me, I might, perhaps," suggested the other.

"Ah yes--if I could explain it! But I am far too ignorant myself--no,
ignorant is not the word--too prejudiced, perhaps, to make you see it
quite as it is. Perhaps I am a little too liberal, and the Saracinesca
are certainly far too conservative. They mistake education for progress.