ho is he?"

"Spicca, of course. Whom did you think I meant? We always laugh at her,"
she said, turning to Orsino, "because she hates him so. She does not
know him, and has never spoken to him. It is his cadaverous face that
frightens her. One can understand that--we of old Rome, have been used
to him since the deluge. But a stranger is horrified at the first sight
of him. Consuelo positively dreads to meet him in the street. She says
that he makes her dream of all sorts of horrors."

"It is quite true," said Maria Consuelo, with a slight movement of her
beautiful shoulders. "There are people one would rather not see, merely
because they are not good to look at. He is one of them and if I see him
coming I turn away."

"I know, I told him so to-day," continued Donna Tullia cheerfully. "We
are old friends, but we do not often meet nowadays. Just fancy! It was
in that little antiquary's shop in the Monte Brianzo--the first on the
left as you go, he has good things--and I saw a bit of embroidery in the
window that took my fancy, so I stopped the carriage and went in. Who
should be there but Spicca, hat and all, looking like old Father Time.
He was bargaining for something--a wretched old bit of
brass--bargaining, my dear! For a few sous! One may be poor, but one has
no right to be mean--I thought he would have got the miserable
antiquary's skin."

"Antiquaries can generally take care of themselves," observed Orsino
incredulously.

"Oh, I daresay--but it looks so badly, you know. That is all I mean.
When he saw me he stopped wrangling and we talked a little, while I had
the embroidery wrapped up. I will show it to you after dinner. It is
sixteenth century, Ugo says--a piece of a chasuble--exquisite flowers on
claret-coloured satin, a perfect gem, so rare now that everything is
imitated. However, that is not the point. It was Spicca. I was
forgetting my story. He said the usual things, you know--that he had
heard that I was very gay this year, but that it seemed to agree with
me, and so on. And I asked him why he never came to see me, and as an
inducement I told him of our great beauty here--that is you, Consuelo,
so please look delighted instead of frowning--and I told him that she
ought to hear him talk, because his face had frightened her so that she
ran away when she saw him coming towards her in the street. You see, if
one flatters his cleverness he does not mind being called ugly--or at
least I thought not, until t