She had to pass this group as she went to her place, and as she did so it divided, and the lady who had been talking turned and saw her. It was, of course, Signora Dietrich, the mistress of the house. As she perceived Minna she made a kind of slide forward, graceful, but distinctly feline, and, in a much softer lower voice than is usual with her compatriots, greeted her with all the most flowery phrases of her flowery native tongue, bidding her welcome to her house, and regretting that she had not been able to do so before, though, she added, she had been quite aware of her presence there. Her friend, Signor Oriole, had told her of the _gentilissima Inglese_ who had come to them, and she hoped that the said _gentilissima_ and _illustrissima_ found everything to her liking, and used her, Signora Dietrich’s, house as though it were her own. Minna, listening to it all, felt herself constrained to confess that the greater part of it was arrant lies. Signor Giuseppe, she felt certain, had never written any such things about her. Signora Dietrich had been told that an Englishwoman had come and had taken two of her best rooms without demurring to the price of them, and that it would be a desirable thing if she were to remain there for some time. This was her way of evincing esteem and politeness. Minna replied with a smile and a few vague phrases and went to her seat, from which she could survey the signora, who was not, at first sight, a very striking-looking person. She was of scarcely medium height; she had evidently once been pretty, in a blonde, fragile, _petite_ style; she was now very much _passée_, and distinctly faded in every respect. Some things she had lost, others she had preserved. Her figure was now nothing to boast of, whatever it might once have been; her complexion was sallow, which ill accorded with her pale-brown hair and light gray eyes. Moreover, the hair was by no means as abundant as it had been, and her brow was wrinkled; charms of youth, or even maturity, had left her and had begun to be merged in the defects of the period called elderly. What had not left her was the thin firm line of her lips, the white teeth which flashed when she smiled, the rapid glances of her eyes, full of indefinable meanings, the delicate white hands, and the marvellous power of expressing volumes by a single turn of her wrist and flash of her fingers. These things had not left her, nor the strength of her will either. She had taken her place at the table, and everyone felt her presence, felt her power. The little faded woman who kept the _pensione_ was the most important person in the house.