everything that was beautiful, had his smoking-coat also made of damask--a piece of brocade, in colours which Harry thought faded--and he, too, threw himself negligently back in his chair and listened to his young aide-de-camp’s report, with his fine head on one side, like a benevolent prince listening to the information collected for him by a young prime minister, all visionary, and eager in his plans for the benefit of their people. Perhaps it was only a refractory ship-captain whom Harry had talked into submission, or an impatient Englishman whose suspicions of extortion had got him into trouble; and sometimes the three would laugh over the characteristic follies of their countrymen, and incapacity to understand the grandiloquence of the Italian authorities. When Harry got to be sufficiently strong in the language, he would himself make very merry over the _sentimento magnifico_ of the professional pillagers whose charges here and there drove a stranger wild, but who always professed the noblest superiority to all interested motives. Rita, who was more than half an Italian, was sometimes piqued by the laughter in which her father joined, and would stand up for the kindly race to whom she owed half her blood and all her training. She would shine out from the soft background when she thus roused herself in defence of her people, her great dark eyes glowing, her white little figure all alive with energy. “You are all made up of suspicions, you English,” she said. “You think everyone wants to cheat you, to get your money from you. Yes, and it is you who want to get what they have from them. I wonder who it is who picks up the pictures, and the _bric-à-brac_, and shakes his head” (which she did with a good imitation of her father’s benevolent regret), “and complains that all the little dealers are beginning to know the value of the things they have to sell, eh, papa? Old Leonardi showed his _sentimento magnifico_ when he let you have that little Ghirlandajo for next to nothing.” “I don’t believe it is a Ghirlandajo--of his school, that is all,” said the Consul, blandly, “and he lets me have it cheap--not for nothing: he lets me have it cheap because he thinks the English travellers will see it here and will go to him to be fleeced, that is the best reason he has, I fear.” “And if it is, you take advantage of it,” cried Rita. “Which is worst? There was that piece of lace the other day. I said (it was quite true) what shall I do with it, Signor Giovanni? it is not enough for a dress; and he said, in the prettiest way, the Signorina shall put it upon her handkerchief to remind her of old Leonardi. I took it; what could I do? it would have made him angry if I had refused it after that. Was not that the _sentimento magnifico_, Mr. Oliver--you who don’t believe in my Italians? If I had offered him money for it he would never have spoken to me again.”