To Orsino's surprise, Madame d'Aranjuez blushed. He could not have told why he was pleased, nor why her change of colour seemed so unexpected.
"Speaking of history," he said, after a very slight pause, "why did you thank me yesterday for having got you a card?"
"I said something--I forget what. Did he manage it?"
"Of course. I had his wife's place. She could not go. Do you dislike being thanked for your good offices? Are you so modest as that?"
"Not in the least, but I hate misunderstandings, though I will get all the credit I can for what I have not done, like other people. When I saw that you knew the Del Ferice, I thought that perhaps she had been exerting herself."
"Why do you hate her so?" asked Maria Consuelo.
"I do not hate her. She does not exist--that is all."
"Why does she not exist, as you call it? She is a very good-natured woman. Tell me the truth. Everybody hates her--I saw that by the way they bowed to her while we were waiting--why? There must be a reason. Is she a--an incorrect person?"
"No. That is the point at which existence is more likely to begin than to end."
"How cynical you are! I do not like that. Tell me about Madame Del Ferice."
"Very well. To begin with, she is a relation of mine."
"Seriously. Of course that gives me a right to handle the whole dictionary of abuse against her."
"No. You would call me cynical. I do not like you to call me by bad names, Madame."
"I had an idea that men liked it," observed Maria Consuelo gravely.
"One does not like to hear disagreeable truths."
"Then it is the truth? Go on. You have forgotten what we were talking about."
"Not at all Donna Tullia, my second, third or fourth cousin, was married once upon a time to a certain Mayer."
"No, Madame. He left her--very suddenly, I believe--for another world. Better or worse? Who can say? Considering his past life, worse, I suppose; but considering that he was not obliged to take Donna Tullia with him, decidedly better."
"You certainly hate her. Then she married Del Ferice."
"Then she married Del Ferice--before I was born. She is fabulously old. Mayer left her very rich, and without conditions. Del Ferice was an impossible person. My father nearly killed him in a duel once--also before I was born. I never knew what it was about. Del Ferice was a spy, in the old days when spies got a living in a Rome--"