‘Ah, so!’ said the latter as if much impressed; and Minna, turning again to her plate, discovered that the empty seat opposite to her was just being occupied by its rightful owner. He was at one and the same time seating himself and looking with piercing earnestness at her, Minna Hastings. Her quick first glance at him showed her a man considerably above middle height, rather spare and muscular, age apparently fifty at least, hair beginning, but only just beginning, to be grizzled, eyes dark and brilliant, full of fire, and capable too of softness, a mobile mouth, concealed by a heavy dark moustache, a fine chin. It was in every respect a noble head. Every line of his figure and face betrayed an eager, restless, nervous temperament, force of intellect, force of will, while a certain perversity about the lines which came from the nose to the mouth, and a certain biting of the lips together, would seem to indicate powerful prejudices, strong passions. The whole aspect of the man was outside the common run; as he looked at her and she at him, Minna felt, without putting her feelings into words, that whatever the rest of the company might be, one member of it was beyond, perhaps above, the average. He gave her the impression of bringing a different atmosphere into the whole place. Almost before she had had time to form these conclusions, Hans Riemann, half rising and addressing the new-comer and Minna, formally presented him to her as Signor Giuseppe Oriole. As he rose again from his chair to make her a profound bow, Minna noticed how exceeding shabby was his dress of rusty black, the cloth worn to its foundation, pathetically poverty-stricken, and how spotlessly clean on the other hand was his white linen collar and shirt-front; he wore no cuffs. They were, as she knew with lightning-like swiftness of intuition, far too great an extravagance for everyday use. She returned his bow and his greeting with a polite inclination of the head, and replied to him in his own language. ‘Ah,’ said he, with another of the piercing looks, ‘you speak Italian!’ ‘Surely,’ said she, smiling. ‘I have lived eight years in Rome.’ ‘Really,’ said he, and then, looking at Riemann, who had become rather red: ‘Where, then, is your friend, Riemann?’ ‘The signora is my friend,’ said Hans, blushing more violently than before. ‘We are cousins.’ ‘Ah!’ said Signor Oriole with a decidedly haughty accent; ‘you did not, then, tell me the truth. You said, “un mio amico.”’ Hans looked awkward, but not angry, and Signor Oriole, suddenly relaxing his severity, said: ‘Well, well; boys will play tricks on old men to the end of time.’ With that he fell to vigorously on a dish of buttered eggs, which the sentimental-looking Ettore now offered to him.