‘Yes, I think I will look at the rooms.’ ‘Are you at liberty, Signor Giuseppe?’ asked Hans, in a matter-of-fact tone which jarred on Minna, though she felt it was ridiculous in her to think anything about it. After all, the man was the ‘manager,’ and was evidently heart and soul in his work. ‘At liberty for what?’ asked Signor Oriole, almost rudely. ‘Mrs. Hastings, you know, would like to see the rooms here, if you will kindly show her what you have disengaged.’ ‘Ah, yes, yes!’ he said, as if remembering himself. Then, with a look upon his face expressive of extreme ill-temper, and dislike of everyone and everything in general, he said coldly: ‘This way, signora, if you will favour me so far.’ CHAPTER III. In a week from that day Minna Hastings left her lodgings and removed to Casa Dietrich. She had stored her superfluous furniture in her studio and the sitting-room belonging to it, and had taken possession of two of the best rooms at Casa Dietrich, on the express understanding that the arrangement was a temporary one, to be terminated by a week’s notice on either side. She was persuaded that she would find it very uncomfortable at the establishment in Piazza Bocca della Verità, and that she should not stay there a day longer than was necessary for her to find another private apartment which should suit her thoroughly. She told her cousin Hans so, and he only laughed and hoped she might be ‘agreeably disappointed.’ As a matter of fact, at the end of that week, when she had been at considerable trouble in settling herself into her rooms, had made them look homelike and comfortable, and had begun to fall into the routine of the house, she felt very unwilling to begin the onerous work of searching for an apartment. Minna was naturally of a somewhat indolent temperament. When roused or interested she was capable both of vigorous thought and vigorous action, but she was not very easy to be roused. She found Casa Dietrich amusing--at first, mildly so; then more strongly fascinating and she could always, if amusement began to pass subtly into ennui, leave the general company and retire to the privacy of her own room, and as she was also much at her studio, she had begun already to think that it might not be a bad plan to remain all the winter where she was. So she appeared pretty regularly at the principal meal--dinner--breakfasting in her own room, and often lunching in her studio; and from her place at table in the evening she surveyed the scene with a placid, good-humoured, impersonal kind of amusement, which showed in her face more perhaps than she was aware, and produced upon one or two persons an effect of which she was utterly unconscious. Signora Dietrich, with her daughter, continued to be away, visiting relations of her late husband at Milan. She was seldom mentioned, but there was a young Italian man who sometimes asked if good news had been received of la signorina Fulvia.