"No. Stories of that kind are generally inventions. She has not been
presented at Court--but that means nothing here. And there is a doubt
about her nationality--but no one has asked her directly about it."
"May I ask who told you the stories?"
The young man's face immediately lost all expression.
"Really--I have quite forgotten," he said. "People have been talking
about her."
Sant' Ilario justly concluded that his companion's informant was a lady,
and probably one in whom the diplomatist was interested. Discretion is
so rare that it can easily be traced to its causes. Giovanni left the
young man and walked away in the opposite direction, inwardly meditating
a piece of diplomacy quite foreign to his nature. He said to himself
that he would watch the man in the world and that it would be easy to
guess who the lady in question was. It would have been clear to any one
but himself that he was not likely to learn anything worth knowing, by
his present mode of procedure.
"Gouache," he said, entering the artist's studio a quarter of an hour
later, "do you know anything about Madame d'Aranjuez?"
"That is all I know," Gouache answered, pointing to Maria Consuelo's
portrait which stood finished upon an easel before him, set in an old
frame.
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