"She is twenty-two years and ten months old," continued his informant.

"Fancy. As middle-aged as that," commented he.

"Yes. She is an Austrian."

"Ah."

"And as I told you, she is visiting the Signora Brandi. Only, she calls her Frao Branta."

"Frao Branta?" John turned the name on his tongue. "Branta? Branta?" What familiar German name, at the back of his memory, did it half evoke? Suddenly he had a flash. "Can you possibly mean Frau Brandt?"

Annunziata gave a gesture of affirmation.

"Yes, that is it," she said. "You sound it just as she did!"

"I see," said John. "And Brandt, if there are degrees of unbirth, is even more furiously unborn than Brandi."

"Unborn—?" said Annunziata, frowning.

"Not noble—not of the aristocracy," John explained.

"Very few people are noble," said Annunziata.

"All the more reason, then, why you and I should be thankful that we are," said he.

"You and I?" she expostulated, with a shrug of her little grey shoulders. "Machè! We are not noble."

"Aren't we? How do you know?" asked John. "Anyhow," he impressively moralized, "we can try to be."

"No," said she, with conclusiveness, with fatalism. "It is no good trying. Either you are noble or simple,—God makes you so,—you cannot help it. If I were noble, I should be a contessina. If you were noble, you would be a gransignore.

"And my unassuming appearance assures you that I'm not?" said he, smiling.

"If you were a gransignore," she instructed him, "you would never be such friends with me—you would be too proud."

John laughed.

"You judge people by the company they keep. Well, I will apply the 

 Prev. P 43/130 next