The Count smiled deprecatingly, and looked at me with a great deal of sentiment, twisting his moustache.  Another pause ensued.  It’s all very well to say I should have dismissed him long before this, but I should like to know on what grounds?

“I wish very much to write my mother that I have found the American lady for a new Countess Filgiatti,” he said at last with emotion.

“Well,” I said awkwardly, “I hope you will find her.”

“Ah, Mees Wick,” exclaimed the Count recklessly, “you are that American lady.  When I saw you in the railway I said, ‘It is my vision!’ At once I desired to embrace the papa.  And he was not cold with me—­he told me of the soda.  I had courage, I had hope.  At first when I see you to-day I am a little derange.  In the Italian way I speak first with the papa.  Then came a little thought in my heart—­no, it is propitious!  In America the daughter maka always her own arrangimento.  So I am spoken.”

At this I rose immediately.  I would not have it on my conscience that I toyed with the matrimonial proposition of even an Italian Count.

“I think I understand you, Count Filgiatti,” I said—­There is something about the most insignificant proposal that makes one blush in a perfectly absurd way.  I have never been able to get over it—­“and I fear I must bring this interview to a close.  I——­”

“Ah, it is too embarrassing for you!  It is experience very new, very strange.”

“No,” I said, regaining my composure, “not at all.  But the fact is, Count Filgiatti, the transaction you propose doesn’t appeal to me.  It is too business-like to be sentimental, and too sentimental to be business-like.  I’m sorry to seem disobliging, but I really couldn’t make up my mind to marry a gentleman for his ancestors who are dead, even if he was willing to marry me for my income which may disappear.  Poppa is very speculative.  But I know there’s a certain percentage of Americans who think a count with a family seat is about the only thing worth bringing away from Europe, now that we manufacture so much for ourselves, and if I meet any of them I’ll bear you in mind.”

“Upon my word!”

It was Mrs. Portheris, in the doorway behind us, just arrived from Siena.

* * * * *

I mentioned the matter to my parents, thinking it might amuse them, and it did.  From a business point of view, however, poppa could not help feeling a certain amount of sympathy for the Count.  “I hope, daughter,” he said, “you didn’t give him the ha-ha to his face.”

CHAPTER XIII.