"Yes. She is an Austrian."

"Ah."

"And as I told you, she is visiting the Signora Brandi. Only, she calls
her Frao Branta."

"Frao Branta?" John turned the name on his tongue. "Branta? Branta?"
What familiar German name, at the back of his memory, did it half evoke?
Suddenly he had a flash. "Can you possibly mean Frau Brandt?"

Annunziata gave a gesture of affirmation.

"Yes, that is it," she said. "You sound it just as she did!"

"I see," said John. "And Brandt, if there are degrees of unbirth, is
even more furiously unborn than Brandi."

"Unborn--?" said Annunziata, frowning.

"Not noble--not of the aristocracy," John explained.

"Very few people are noble," said Annunziata.

"All the more reason, then, why you and I should be thankful that we
are," said he.

"You and I?" she expostulated, with a shrug of her little grey
shoulders. "_Machè!_ We are not noble."