"It's vodka. The Russian ladies get tipsy with this. See how I drink it! I'm half tipsy already," she went on, raising the glass and looking through it; "I don't mind! It has the opposite effect on me to what it has on every one else. After drinking, I no longer speak the truth." "I don't observe it," said Massimo, dryly. "So this is vodka, is it? It's nasty." "Oh, I've had none to speak of to-day!" said Marianna. She laughed and sipped; then held the glass to Regina's lips and made her drink too. "Now we'll go and interrupt the idyll of the dog and the cat," said Marianna, leading the way to the next room where Arduina and the author were still _tête-à-tête_ under the branches of the red-berried plant. Regina and Marianna sat down opposite to them on a divan of furs, and Massimo remained standing. In the next room one of the old ladies was playing "_Se a te, O cara!_" Regina now felt an inexplicable content; the gentle yet impassioned music, the warmth of the divan whose soft furriness suggested a pussy cat to be stroked; the indefinable perfume with which the hot air was charged, the vodka, too, which still pulsed in her throat--all gave her the initial feelings of a pleasant intoxication. Arduina also seemed excited. She spoke loud, in the tones which Regina had noted in the flirtatious cousin, Claretta. She seemed no longer to recognise her relations. "What's the matter with the silly thing?" Regina asked herself, and Marianna must have guessed her thought, for she said slyly, "They're love-making." Regina laughed unthinkingly. Then suddenly she felt shocked. "Is it possible!" she murmured. "Anything is possible," said the rat. "You are such a child as yet; but in time you'll see--_anything is possible_." CHAPTER VI Next day Antonio went to the Princess about the collection of her rents. She invited him and his wife to dinner on Sunday, and this invitation was followed by others. Regina accepted them all, but unwillingly. The dinners were magnificent, served by pompous men servants, whose solemnity, said Antonio, spoiled his digestion. Regina found the entertainments dull, and came away out of temper. The guests were elderly foreigners or obscure Italian poets and artists; their conversation might have been interesting, for it touched on letters, art, the theatre, matters of palpitating contemporary life, but only stale commonplaces were uttered, and Regina heard nothing at all correspondent to the ideas sparkling in her own mind. She was bored; yet no sooner was she back in the atmosphere of Casa Venutelli than she thought enviously of the Princess's saloons, where the servants passed and waited, silent and automatic as machines, where all was beauty, luxury, splendour, and the light itself seemed to shine by enchantment. At last the day came when Antonio and his wife chose the furniture for their own Apartment in Via Massimo d'Azeglio.