"They are not of our world," the princess had said, decisively, to Bianca shortly after the Rossanos' arrival, "and there is no necessity for us to know them"--and the girl had nodded her head silently, though with a slight sigh. It was not amusing to be princess of Montefiano in one's own right and do nothing but drive out in a closed carriage every afternoon, and perhaps walk for half an hour outside one of the city gates or in the Villa Pamphili with one's stepmother by one's side and a footman ten paces behind. Bianca Acorari thought she would like to have known Giacinta Rossano, who looked amiable and _simpatica_, and was certainly pretty. But though there was only the thickness of a floor between them, the two establishments were as completely apart as if the Tiber separated them, and Bianca knew by experience that it would be useless to attempt to combat her step-mother's prejudices. Indeed, she herself regarded the professor and his daughter with a curiosity not unmixed with awe, and would scarcely have been surprised if a judgment had overtaken them even on their way up and down the staircase; for had not Monsieur l'Abbé declared that neither father nor daughter ever went to mass?
This assertion was not strictly true--at any rate, so far as the Signorina Giacinta was concerned. The professor, no doubt, seldom went inside a church, except, perhaps, on special occasions, such as Easter or Christmas. He possessed a scientific conscience as well as a spiritual conscience, and he found an insuperable difficulty in reconciling the one with the other on a certain point of dogma which need not be named. He was not antichristian, however, though he might be anticlerical, and he encouraged Giacinta to go to the churches rather than the reverse, as many fathers of families in his position do, both in Italy and elsewhere.
Professor Rossano and his daughter had inhabited the Palazzo Acorari nearly three months before Bianca made the discovery that the girl at whom she had cast stolen glances of curiosity, as being the first heretic of her own nationality she had ever beheld, was, if appearances spoke the truth, no heretic at all. She had actually seen Giacinta kneeling in the most orthodox manner at mass in the neighboring church of Santa Maria dei Campitelli. Bianca had informed the princess of her discovery that very day at breakfast in the presence of the Abbé Roux, who was an invariable guest on Sundays and feast-days. She nourished a secret hope that her step-mother might become more favorably disposed towards the family on the second floor if it could satisfactorily be proved not to be entirely heretical. The princess, however, did not receive the information in the spirit Bianca had expected.