Evidently I darkened the door.  My hostess dropped liner maccaroni—­into her mouth, and rose hastily with a harsh exclamation and a flushed face.  I immediately perceived that the Signora Serafina’s secret was even better worth knowing than I had supposed, and that the way to learn it was to take it for granted.  I summoned my best Italian, I smiled and bowed and apologised for my intrusion; and in a moment, whether or no I had dispelled the lady’s irritation, I had at least stimulated her prudence.  I was welcome, she said; I must take a seat.  This was another friend of hers—­also an artist, she declared with a smile which was almost amiable.  Her companion wiped his moustache and bowed with great civility.  I saw at a glance that he was equal to the situation.  He was presumably the author of the statuettes on the table, and he knew a money-spending forestiere when he saw one.  He was a small wiry man, with a clever, impudent, tossed-up nose, a sharp little black eye, and waxed ends to his moustache.  On the side of his head he wore jauntily a little crimson velvet smoking-cap, and I observed that his feet were encased in brilliant slippers.  On Serafina’s remarking with dignity that I was the friend of Mr. Theobald, he broke out into that fantastic French of which certain Italians are so insistently lavish, and declared with fervour that Mr. Theobald was a magnificent genius.

“I am sure I don’t know,” I answered with a shrug.  “If you are in a position to affirm it, you have the advantage of me.  I have seen nothing from his hand but the bambino yonder, which certainly is fine.”

He declared that the bambino was a masterpiece, a pure Corregio.  It was only a pity, he added with a knowing laugh, that the sketch had not been made on some good bit of honeycombed old panel.  The stately Serafina hereupon protested that Mr. Theobald was the soul of honour, and that he would never lend himself to a deceit.  “I am not a judge of genius,” she said, “and I know nothing of pictures.  I am but a poor simple widow; but I know that the Signor Teobaldo has the heart of an angel and the virtue of a saint.  He is my benefactor,” she added sententiously.  The after-glow of the somewhat sinister flush with which she had greeted me still lingered in her cheek, and perhaps did not favour her beauty; I could not but fancy it a wise custom of Theobald’s to visit her only by candle-light.  She was coarse, and her pour adorer was a poet.

“I have the greatest esteem for him,” I said; “it is for this reason that I have been uneasy at not seeing him for ten days.  Have you seen him?  Is he perhaps ill?”

“Ill!  Heaven forbid!” cried Serafina, with genuine vehemence.

Her companion uttered a rapid expletive, and reproached her with not having been to see him.  She hesitated a moment; then she simpered the least bit and bridled.  “He comes to see me—­without reproach!  But it would not be the same for me to go to him, though, indeed, you may almost call him a man of holy life.”