to every question that touches humanity, to every motive in all dealings, and to every purpose which, in that blank state, a girl attributes to all human beings, living and dead. It is a magic window through which all good things appear clearly, though not often truly, and all bad things are either completely invisible, or seen in a dull, neutral, and totally uninteresting shadow of uniform misunderstanding. We judge that it must be so, from our observation. This is not analysis, but inspection.
Behind the blank lies, in the first place, the temperament, then the character, then the mind, and then that great, uncertain element of heredity, monstrous or god-like, which animates and moves all three in the gestation of unborn fate, and which is fate itself in later life, so far as there is any such thing as fatality.
Behind the blank there may be turbulent and passionate blood, there may be a character of iron and a man-ruling mind. But the blank is a blank, for all that. Catherine of Russia was once an innocent and quiet little German girl, with empty, wondering eyes, and school-girl sentimentalities. Goethe might have taken her for Werther's Charlotte. Good, bad, or indifferent, the future woman is at the magic window, and all that she is to be is within her already.
Vittoria d'Oriani was certainly not to be a Catherine, but there was no lack of conflicting heredities beneath her innocence. Orsino had thought more than most young men of his age, and he was aware of the fact, as he looked at her and talked with her, and carried on one of those apparently empty conversations, of which the recollection sometimes remains throughout a lifetime, while he quietly studied her face, and tried to find out the secret of its rare charm.
He began by treating her almost as a foreigner. He remembered long afterwards how he smiled as he asked her the first familiar question, as though she had been an English girl, or Miss Lizzie Slayback, the heiress from Nevada.
'How do you like Rome?'
'It is a great city,' answered Vittoria.
'But you do not like it? You do not think it is beautiful?'
'Of course, it is not Palermo,' said the young girl, quite naturally. 'It has not the sea; it has not the mountains—'
'No mountains?' interrupted Orsino smiling. 'But there are mountains all round Rome.'
'Not like Palermo,' replied Vittoria, soberly. 'And then it has not the beautiful streets.'
'Poor Rome!' Orsino laughed a little. 'Not even fine streets! Have you seen nothing that pleases you here!'
'Oh yes—there are fine houses, and I have seen the Tiber, and the Queen, and—' she stopped short.
'And what else?' inquired Orsino, very much amused.
Vittoria turned her brown eyes full upon him, and paused a moment before she answered.
'You are making me say things which seem foolish to you, though they seem sensible to me,' she said quietly.
'They seem original, not foolish. It is quite true that Palermo is a beautiful city, but we Romans forget it. And if you have never seen another river, the Tiber is interesting, I suppose. That is what you mean. No, it is quite reasonable.'
Vittoria blushed a little, and looked down, only half reassured. It was her first attempt at conversation, and she had said what she thought, naturally and simply. She was not sure whether the great dark young man, who had eyes exactly like his mother's, was laughing at her or not. But he did not know that she had never been to a party in her life.
'Is the society in Palermo amusing?' he inquired carelessly.
'I do not know,' she answered, again blushing, for she was a little ashamed of being so very young. 'I left the convent on the day we started to come to Rome. And my mother did not live in Palermo,' she added.
'No—I had forgotten that.'
Orsino relapsed into silence for a while. He would willingly have given up the attempt at conversation, so far as concerned any hope of making it interesting. But he liked the sound of Vittoria's voice, and he wished she would speak again. On his right hand was Tebaldo, who, as the head of a family, and not a Roman, sat next to Corona. He seemed to be making her rather bold compliments. Orsino caught a phrase.
'You are certainly the most beautiful woman in Italy, Princess,' the Sicilian was saying.
Orsino raised his head, and turned slowly towards the speaker. As he did so, he saw his mother's look. Her brows were a little contracted, which was unusual, but she was just turning away to speak to San Giacinto on her other side, with an otherwise perfectly indifferent expression. Orsino laughed.
'My mother has been the most beautiful woman in Europe since before I was born,' he said, addressing Tebaldo rather pointedly, for the latter's remark had been perfectly audible to him.
Tebaldo had a thin face, with a square, narrow forehead, and heavy jaws that came to an overpointed chin. His upper lip was very short, and his moustache was unusually small, black and glossy, and turned up at the ends in aggressive points. His upper teeth were sharp, long, and regular, and he showed them when he smiled. The smile did not extend upwards above the nostrils, and there was something almost sinister in the still black eyes. In the front view the lower part of the face was triangular, and the low forehead made the upper portion seem square. He was a man of bilious constitution, of an even, yellow-brown complexion, rather lank and bony in frame, but of a type which is often very enduring. Such men sometimes have violent and uncontrolled tempers, combined with great cunning, quickness of intelligence, and an extraordinary power of taking advantage of circumstances.
Tebaldo smiled at Orsino's remark, not at all acknowledging that it might be intended as a rebuke.
'It is hard to believe that she can be your mother,' he said quietly, and with such frankness as completely disarmed resentment.
But Orsino in his thoughts contrasted Tebaldo's present tone with the sound of his voice when speaking to the Princess an instant earlier, and he forthwith disliked the man, and believed him to be false and double. Corona either had not heard, or pretended not to hear, and talked indifferently with San Giacinto, whose vast, lean frame seemed to fill two places at the table, while his energetic gray head towered high above everyone else. Orsino turned to Vittoria again.
'Should you be pleased if someone told you that you were the most beautiful young lady in Italy?' he enquired.
Vittoria looked at him wonderingly.
'No,' she answered. 'It would not be true. How should I be pleased?'
'But suppose, for the sake of argument, that it were true. I am imagining a case. Should you be pleased?'
'I do not know—I think—' She hesitated and paused.
'I am very curious to know what you think,' said Orsino, pressing her for an answer.
'I think it would depend upon whether I liked the person who told me so.' Again the blood rose softly in her face.
'That is exactly what I should think,' answered Orsino gravely. 'Were you sorry to leave the convent?'
'Yes, I cried a great deal. It was my home for so many years, and I was so happy there.'
The girl's eyes grew dreamy as she looked absently across the table at Guendalina Pietrasanta. She
