"Ah, you have heard? Poor man! He is badly hurt, I fear. Would you
like to see him?"

"Presently, if I may," answered Giovanni. "We are all fond of
Gouache. How did the accident happen?"

"Faustina ran over him," said Flavia, fixing her dark eyes on
Giovanni and allowing her pretty face to assume an expression of
sympathy--for the sufferer. "Faustina and papa," she added.

"Flavia! How can you say such things!" exclaimed the princess, who
spent a great part of her life in repressing her daughter's manner
of speech.

"Well, mamma--it was the carriage of course. But papa and Faustina
were in it. It is the same thing."

Giovanni looked at Faustina, but her thin fresh face expressed
nothing, nor did she show any intention of commenting on her
sister's explanation. It was the first time he had seen her near
enough to notice her, and his attention was arrested by something
in her looks which surprised and interested him. It was something
almost impossible to describe, and yet so really present that it
struck Sant' Ilario at once, and found a place in his memory. In
the superstitions of the far north, as in the half material
spiritualism of Polynesia, that look has a meaning and an
interpretation. With us, the interpretation is lost, but the
instinctive persuasion that the thing itself is not wholly
meaningless remains ineradicable. We say, with a smile at our own